


Bucket list fic

by WeDidItKiddo



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Antwerp, Ikea breakfast, Medium Angst, an original character might pop up, denim-clad tourists, i really don't have a clue yet where this story is taking me, slowburn, spiked drink in Finland
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-01-11 00:43:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 40,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18419312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeDidItKiddo/pseuds/WeDidItKiddo
Summary: Scotland. Pyeongchang. Antwerp. Utah. And maybe some other stuff in between.





	1. Blue paint

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! This is my "bucket list fic", in which I literally try to incorporate every single event or period in their partnership I've ever wanted to write or read about. (If you're here for Scotland, you might want to stick around for Antwerp as well *ahum ahum*.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scotland, 2015. Some blue paint stuff happens and love has nothing to do with it. Or does it?

_Ackergill Tower Castle, Scotland_

_June 2015_

 

Even as she’s in the bathroom single-handedly emptying the vanilla soap dispenser in an attempt to scrub the blue paint off her cheeks – _they could have freaking mentioned it takes sandpaper to wash this stuff off_ \- Tessa still tells herself she doesn’t regret what happened on the beach fifteen minutes earlier.

Or, more accurately, what _didn’t_ happen.

She can’t regret something that didn’t happen. She’s tried to etch that in her brain for the past three minutes, and she can almost believe it if she just ignores the treacherous stinging behind her eyes (cause of which is NOT sea salt).

So, it’s not regret that’s triggering her primal instinct to flee the country and take the first plane back to London (which she realizes would be a tad dramatic anyway); it’s the shame of wishing something more _had_ happened, and the traces of blue paint on her cheek and neck and _son of a motherless goat, even on the collar of the pearly white robe_ that mark yet another part of her she’s claimed.  

This damn blue paint. It had seemed innocent enough that morning, when their entire GMP group was finishing up breakfast before their skeet shooting activity and someone (presumably Johnny Reid, but Tessa wasn’t sure) had handed out some Saskatchewan Roughriders jerseys. Scott was – unsurprisingly – one of the first people to claim one, and when the paint eventually ended up on their table, it was only a matter of seconds before he’d convinced Kaitlyn to cover half of his face in blue.

In retrospect, the fact that the paint had endured an activity-filled afternoon and a North Sea dip probably should’ve been a first red flag that this stuff is semi-permanent.

Well. It hadn’t.

Having moved on to soaking one of the pearly white towels with water – just calling them “white” seems rude, seeing as the owners of Ackergill Tower Castle covered every single detail to perfection – Tessa pumps some of the soap onto it and starts scrubbing her face, hoping this will be more effective than just using her hands.

Four, five, scrubs and her entire face is on fire. Great. If she’s now also allergic to the paint, she might as well give up and take that plane to London after all.

By the time she gives up on the towel, the sink looks a little like a two-year-old went berserk with some water and blue paint. She lets out a frustrated groan and looks up, the eyes she meets in the mirror those of someone she barely recognizes.

And she almost laughs. A dry, heaving, closer-to-tears-than-smiling laugh that sticks in her throat. Some of the paint has gotten onto the mirror, surely from any other source than her face, because the latter still looks exactly the same as it did five minutes ago.

She’s going to have to accept the fact that this goddamn paint is never coming off, isn’t she?

 

____________________________

 

_Camps Bar, Scotland_

_ONE DAY BEFORE THE PAINT HAPPENS_

“She hasn’t noticed, I’m telling you.”

“Tess, c’mon. She has to have noticed.”

“I genuinely don’t think she has.” Watching the lady sitting in front of her through her lashes, Tessa swirls a tiny umbrella around her Bloody Scotland cocktail and curls her lips into an amused smirk. Next to her, Scott has abandoned his half-empty pint of Scottish Ale and is raising a brow at her with a twinkle in his eyes.

“This is not the kind of entertainment I was expecting tonight,” he mutters as he leans into her right side, and she presses her lips together to keep in a chuckle.

To be honest, anyone with a sense of humor would have a hard time keeping a straight face when an oblivious elder woman in front of you is telling her husband your entire life story without realizing the subjects of her tales are sitting right behind her.

So far, Tessa and Scott have sat through listening to her talk about the early years of their career – according to the lady, they must’ve had an affair at one point and maybe even a secret baby no one knows about – _“I read about it on the internet, Phillip”_ – and the 2010 Olympic Games, when they’d reportedly split up because the pressure of the media and the sudden attention from the rest of the world was getting to them (completely disregarding the fact that Scott wasn't even single in Vancouver in the first place).

Really, Tessa is learning things about her and Scott she had no idea about. She probably wouldn’t have found this as funny as she does if it weren’t for the drinks she’s already consumed and the storytelling skills of the lady, who’s passionately retelling their 17-year career as if she was there to see it happen.

Tessa guesses she can’t really blame her for going down the romantic route just like everyone else on the planet has done at one point or another. Suddenly feeling very self-aware, she glances down at her outfit and then at Scott’s; the fact that their closets (coincidentally, honest to god) have been color-coordinated since they were sixteen and eighteen and Scott finally stopped whistling loudly every time she tried to give him fashion advice probably isn’t helping matters much either. She hasn’t selected a single piece of clothing for him in three years, which also goes for the cream-colored dress shirt that matches perfectly with her dress tonight, but old habits are hard to break.

The only one who's not all that amused by all of this is the husband, who just seems terribly confused that his wife is talking about the two people who he thought were “just some Canadian kids who are on this trip with us”.

“I can’t believe you would do that,” Scott suddenly murmurs, his breath hot in her ear, and Tessa checks back in to find that the lady is talking about their _Good Kisser_  performance at Skate Niagara, which was surely a way for her to let Scott know what he was missing out on when he found himself a girlfriend after Sochi.

She spins around in her chair with the drink in her hand, making overly big eyes at her skating partner. “Crap, she’s totally onto me.”

Scott laughs a loud bark-laugh but he must realize it sounds a little fake, because he immediately takes a big gulp of his drink. He doesn’t look at her again after that, and Tessa figures it’s probably better to try and tune out the woman’s voice and actually listen to Johnny, Michael and Miku, who are playing a set on the little podium across the room.

The pub is crammed tonight. Their entire GMP group is scattered across the room and chatting with the locals, who for some unknown reason seem to be fascinated by everything Canadian, and it really, _really_ shouldn’t be as hard to ignore the woman in front of them as it is.

She can’t help it: she overhears everything. She briefly considers tapping the lady on the shoulder to let her know that they can hear her, but she doesn’t want to embarrass her, and she doesn’t want to move to another table either – say, for example, Jen Reid’s table over by the podium. She loves the woman, she really does, but her introverted nerves are already fried after a day like today, and Jen is the kind of person who will dance on a table to get people’s attention. Hiding here in the corner with Scott and Kaitlyn, who’s taking an awful long time in the bathroom, is by far the better option.

Waiting for the story to end it is, then. She leans back in her chair, bopping her head to the music and pretending to ignore the way Scott is still refusing to look at her, when the husband’s next words make her stomach churn uncomfortably.

“So are you saying they’re actually dating now or what? Because it’s really confusing the way you’re explaining things to me, honey.”

Scott has heard it too; she can tell by the way he suddenly straightens his spine and scrunches his nose in an uncomfortable smile that's directed at absolutely no one, because no one in the room is looking at them.

She sinks back in her chair, wishing she could disappear now that the hilarity has worn off. “I was so adamant we weren’t going to be a love story,” she says quietly, touching her lips to her drink so she can pretend she never said anything if she needs to. Then, she reconsiders and straightens up again, putting her drink back on the table. “I don't want us to be a love story. I want us to be about the skating and the incredible results that can come out of the mutual respect between a man and a woman, you know? Nothing more than that. And it's all they ever seem to care about.”

She diverts her gaze to look at Scott, and what she sees makes her frown. Whereas his face is usually a Van Gogh painting exposing every single emotion he’s feeling in incredible detail, he now has an empty look in his eyes, his beer floating in the air somewhere between the table and his mouth.

"Yeah, I know what you mean," he says hoarsely. Some of the color appears again when he smiles at her, but it's only grey. The color of the carefully constructed camaraderie they’ve used to bridge the gap between them since Sochi, the one she absolutely hates.

In reality, the exchange of looks that follows lasts for about two seconds, but it’s two seconds too long. Kaitlyn appears at their table out of thin air, snapping Scott out of his momentary daze, and by the time she’s settled next to him to listen to the band in the corner, everything has gone back to normal.

Tessa takes another sip of her drink. Johnny strums the last accords of a song on his guitar and announces a new one, “What’s Love Got To Do With It”, after which he points at Miku and gives her the green light.

From the moment the piano and Miku’s voice fill the room and reduce the noise to a low murmur, the hairs on the back of her neck stand up straight. She looks at Scott and Kaitlyn and watches her lean into his right side to whisper something in his ear, but the real magic is happening on his other side.

Tessa can hardly breath. The energy between them is palpable, electric, bursting into color for the first time in a long while. Even like this, with his back mostly turned to her, she can tell Scott is hyper-aware of her presence behind him; she can tell by the way he cranes his neck and keeps rubbing the back of his head.

He finishes the rest of his beer before he leans in to whisper something to Kaitlyn. She nods and glances over her shoulder at Tessa: if she'd like another drink. Tessa shakes her head no, holding her breath until Kaitlyn's back has disappeared in the crowd and finally breathing out when Scott turns around to lock eyes with her.

_… I try to ignore that it means more than that, oooh, what’s love got to do with it …_

“I know,” she mouths, replying to the question in his eyes she doesn’t need to hear out loud to understand.

He nods: he understands as well. It's a deal made between the two of them before any hands are shaken or words are spoken. He lets his gaze linger for another moment like he always used to, before. And then he smiles in technicolor. 

____________________________

_Reiss Beach, Scotland_

_ONE HOUR BEFORE THE PAINT HAPPENS_

“THIS IS A VERY, VERY BAD IDEA AND I WILL KILL THE PERSON WHO FUCKING SUGGESTED TO DO THIS IN THE FIRST PLACE!”

With a wailing scream, Kaitlyn ditches her white robe and barges straight into the North Sea, pumping her arms and pulling her knees up high in the process. Tessa watches with a mad grin as she’s the first one to take the plunge; the rest of their group has either decided not to brave the cold after all or go for a more bearable toe dip instead. She and Miku are still debating whether they should go for a complete head-to-toe dip like they'd agreed in the warm comfort of the castle's entrance hall, but they’d quickly and unanimously decided pulling off the band aid like Kaitlyn just did is _not_ going to be their way of approach.

“TESS! COME ON, IT’S NICE AND WARM IN HERE!” Kaitlyn waves one arm over her head from the spot where she’s come to a stop, about five yards into the ocean, and Tessa shivers violently in her robe as she laughs at the look on the half-blue face that matches Scott's.

 _Ye fuckin’ bampot,_ she thinks with a Scottish accent that sounds perfect in her head. Even from this distance, she can tell Kaitlyn’s shivering from head to toe.

“That girl is absolutely mad,” Miku mutters next to her. She shakes her head and squeezes Tessa a little closer to stay clear of the freezing wind. It’s been cold every day they’ve been in Scotland, but they couldn’t possibly have picked a worse day to go for a North Sea dip than today.

Tessa shoots Miku a grin, her hair going absolutely mad around her head. She doesn’t remember when she decided to wear it down today, but out of all her decisions that made her end up on a beach in Scotland with wild hair and nothing but a robe and some sweats, that one was probably the worst. “Are you going to go for it?” she asks.

“Are you?” Miku bounces the question back at her. “You sure sound like you are.”

“Oh, it’s only a wee bit chilly, right?” She smirks and starts untangling herself from Miku, dropping her dry clothes on the beach and ignoring every instinct that’s telling her to get someplace warm and dry preferably sometime in the next thirty seconds _._

By the time she’s down to her bathing suit, though, her lips are purple and her feet completely numb. “Oh _hell_ no, this isn’t happening.”

“TESS! COME ON!” Kaitlyn is still shouting over the wind and the sound of the waves, but they can only barely hear her. As if to prove she really isn’t freezing in there, which she undoubtedly is, she beckons one last time for Tessa to come over and then plunges under a wave.

When she comes up for air, the wind carries her laughter over to the dunes, where the rest of the group is getting ready to go in. Spurred on by Kait’s enthusiasm, Jen and Johnny Reid take of as well, and Tessa figures she can probably get away with hiding in the dunes with Miku until everyone gets too cold to stay out here.

Wrong.

Five minutes later, when she’s back in the bathrobe and she and Miku are enwrapped in a conversation about their travels, cold drops of sea water suddenly start raining down on them and Tessa squeaks, throwing herself onto her side to avoid the water (which does nothing but get sand all up her bathrobe).

“You’re going in, missy.” Kaitlyn tugs on the robe and Tessa lets her, because they did agree to do this and she can't just pass the opportunity to go for a North Sea dip, right?

“I can’t freaking believe I’m letting you do this, Kait.” She glances over her shoulder one more time to shake her head at Miku before she gets dragged to the water, but instead her gaze focuses on Scott’s figure a little higher up in the dunes.

She can’t see his eyes because his cap is pulled down against the wind, but she knows he’s looking at her. For a brief moment, the wind in her ears is gone and she stops fighting Kaitlyn's grip.

And then she’s forced to turn around if she doesn’t want to face-palm the sand.

 _Whatever,_ she thinks as she runs down the beach to the water. _He was probably just looking at Kait anyway._

 

* * *

 

He was.

She learns that ten minutes later, when they emerge from the water and Kaitlyn decides to join Jen and Jonny around the illegal bonfire someone’s started a little further down the beach.

Completely numbed by the cold, Tessa shakily collects her bathrobe from the spot where Miku has kept the rest of her clothes, smiling at her friend and nodding when she asks if it’s alright if she joins the other around the bonfire. _Yes, sure, I’ll be there in a minute._

She knows she won't be.

When Miku is gone, she takes her time to dry off, probably a little too much to let it pass as “casual” when she eventually climbs up the sand to the dunes. He’s back in the exact same spot in the beach grass where he was ten minutes earlier: the only thing that has changed is the beer in his hand, which wasn’t there before.

“Hey, you.” She pats his knee and sinks down next to him, immediately settling in discomfort when the grass pricks painfully under her ass. Was it a conscious decision of him to pick the most uncomfortable spot on the entire beach to sit down?

“Here, it’s still cold.” Scott nudges her arm and hands her another beer, wasting no time on a greeting.

“A miracle,” Tessa says with a straight face, but she cracks a smile a moment later when a freezing gust of wind surprises her and nearly makes her tip over.

His eyes light up, even just for a moment. “I know, right? They don't even need fridges here. One of Scotland’s mysteries.”

She shoots him a grin and tries to get a little more comfortable. Once she’s found a good spot, the grass isn’t even that painful anymore, and it’s exponentially better up here than down on the beach, where the bonfire is going wild in the wind.

“Not in the mood for s’mores?” she asks light-heartedly, looking up at him with the beer dangling between her fingers and trying to catch his gaze, but he doesn’t divert his eyes from a spot behind her left shoulder.

“Not really, no.”

“Hmm.” Okay, so he’s doing the hard-to-get thing where he won’t tell her what’s on his mind (because something definitely is). If experience and countless road trips have taught her anything, it’s that this phase normally doesn’t last longer than five minutes, and if it does, distraction is usually the key.

“Hey, your face is still blue.” She flashes him a smile and ticks her beer bottle against his to get his attention. “Didn’t you go in?”

She knows he did, for no longer than a minute or so.

“I did, but this stuff is more persistent than the waterproof mascara Danny put all over my face that one time.” He grins, which isn’t really a grin but more of a twitch of his lips, and takes a long sip from his beer.

Then, his eyes finally meet hers. They’re crowded in darkness under his cap, but he lingers longer than she’s expecting him to.

“What are you thinking about?” she asks, resting her chin on her knee. Sand is getting in her eyes, but she doesn’t care, not as long as he’s not doing everything to avoid her gaze anymore.

“Oh, I don’t know. Stuff.” He sniffs and pulls his knees in, closing himself off again, and Tessa knows he’s not going to talk until he’s ready.

But she’s fine with that. As long as he’s not trying to shoo her away with some lame excuse, she’ll take it.

So they sit there and watch the others on the beach as the wind settles down around them, allowing them to finally hear some of what is going on with the rest of their group. Someone has initiated a very poorly choreographed bonfire dance, and Jen Reid looks like she’s having the time of her life as she hollers into the darkening evening sky and jumps around in the sand with Miku and Kaitlyn. 

“ _You_ are stuff.”

Tessa whips her head around, caught off guard by whatever the hell that was supposed to mean. His jaw is ticking and his eyes are narrowed into the distance.

Despite what she's expecting, he doesn’t say anything else, and Tessa finds herself sinking into a minor existential crisis next to him. Did she hear that correctly or was it really just the wind? Should she ask him to repeat it? And is it an option to get a little bit of her chill back, please?

Her mind is racing but she’s trying to hide it, quickly coming up with something else to talk about. An opportunity to pretend like nothing happened arises a moment later, when an older lady joins the group that’s dancing around the fire.

“Oh, gosh. Isn’t that the lady who was gossiping about us yesterday?” She points one freezing cold finger at the lady in the pink fleece jacket, who’s now bumping her hip against Jen’s.

Scott doesn’t fall for her poor attempt at changing the subject, either because he doesn’t _want_ to change the subject or because he’s too wrapped up in his own thoughts to notice. He glances at the lady for a mere second and then his eyes are back on Kaitlyn, dark and pensive and distant.

“I can’t talk to her,” he says. He’s still not trying to make his voice be heard over the wind, so either she’s heard him or she hasn’t. But she has. For the second time.

She looks over her shoulder and watches Kaitlyn dance around Jen and Miku in her pink beanie, happy and free. Those are the two most accurate words to describe Kaitlyn: happy and free. Tessa’s always assumed her lively, positive personality is part of the reason why Scott fell for her after Sochi, because it was exactly what he needed to distract him from his own crumbling world around him.

Looking at him now, she realizes she’s probably been wrong all this time. “What do you mean you can’t talk to her?” She’s very aware of the tone of her voice, because she doesn’t want him to close himself off again, but she doesn’t want to push him to say anything either.

“Just... look at her.” There’s a sudden mix of frustration and despair on his face that Tessa doesn’t quite dare look away from, but she doesn’t think he notices. “I can’t. I’ve tried. We talk, obviously, but not…”

His voice trails off, and Tessa turns slightly so she has the same view as him. When Kaitlyn stops to give Jen a spontaneous hug, Scott lets go of a breath he’d been holding and stretches his legs, putting his hands behind him in the sand to keep himself balanced.

To anyone on that beach - Kaitlyn, for example, who lifts her arm in that exact moment to grin and wave at the two of them – Scott’s left hand is just resting behind Tessa. To Tessa, however, his entire shoulder is suddenly pressing against hers and his arm is lighting up her entire back.

Shitshitshitshitshit. It’s hard to think anything else, especially when she feels him shifting even a little closer to her and resting his chin on her shoulder.

Down on the beach, Kaitlyn lets out a scream directed toward them, and Tessa’s gut wrenches. She’s happy. She probably thinks nothing of this because she’s so used to being around her and Scott when they get lost in their own little world, when - let’s be real here - in this moment they’re not just two friends seeking warmth by each other. She doesn’t deserve this.

“YOU'RE CRAZY!” Scott hollers back at her, right in Tessa’s ear, but she doesn’t flinch and gives Kaitlyn a little wave that hopefully doesn’t look too guilty, resisting the urge to pull her legs up to her chest.

Kaitlyn laughs and then gets pulled away by Jen. Her eyes no longer on the two of them now, Scott lets out another sigh, and his chin lands back on her shoulder.

“I need someone who knows how it feels, Tess. You’re the only one.”

An army of goosebumps erupts on her back and arms. “Scott, I don’t think…”

“That’s the beauty of real life, eh?” There’s a raspiness in his voice that wasn’t there before, and he tilts his head a little lower, his cheek getting in the danger zone where it's only a few more inches until he crosses the lines entirely. “You don’t get to choose.”

All it takes is having known him for over seventeen years to realize that he’s talking about what she said the night before: _I don’t want us to be a love story._

His words have already crossed the lines, but his cheek follows suite when he rubs his nose against her, breathing in the scent of the crook of her neck, and she doesn’t stop him. She tells herself it’s because she can’t move, but she knows that’s only a lie to soothe her conscience.

He breathes out, and it’s the sound of relief. More goosebumps, on her legs this time.

“Don’t,” she mutters as she pushes back, because that’s what she’s supposed to say, though it takes her another four seconds to move her cheek away from him. Four seconds of relief she can't afford to show him, because it's already turning into something else.

Focusing intently on keeping her legs from shaking, she gets up and pulls the hood of the robe over her head, starting to move away from him when he grabs her by her ankle.

“Tess, don’t.”

_Don’t say that. Don’t you fucking say that._

She turns her head and looks him dead in the eye. “If you care enough about any of this, you’ll let me.”

She probably won't ever know exactly how much he cares, but it’s enough to let her go.

 

____________________________

 

 

And that’s the story of how she got blue paint all over her face and neck. Or, in other words, how her best friend and business partner ends up being the reason why _she_ is the one to break his girlfriend’s heart fifteen minutes later, when the door of Ackergill Tower Castle’s bathroom opens up and Kaitlyn walks in.

“Oh, hi there!” she says when she sees her standing by the sink. Her face splits into a smile, one that fades only a little when her eyes flick to the blue towel in Tessa’s hand. “I was looking for you, I didn’t realize you'd gone back already. Everything okay in here?”

For a question that requires a relatively simple answer, Tessa has a hard time just putting the right words together in her head. “Yeah, sure, just trying to wash this off.” She shoots her a smile and starts patting the sink dry with the towel. “Are the others back yet?”

“Yeah, we all got pretty cold at the end there. I think some of the guys are still putting the fire out, though.” Kaitlyn smiles and files into one of the bathroom stalls. When the door shuts behind her, Tessa’s chest deflates instantly.

 _It’s just blue paint, T, it's not like you committed a crime or something_.

 _Then why does it feel like I freaking have?_ another little voice answers.

“Jen looked like she was having a great time,” she says, just to avoid the awkward silence that ensues and to drown out the sound of pee hitting the toilet bowl, even though Kaitlyn is not the type of gal to get embarrassed about that kind of stuff. Having finished drying off the sink, she ditches the now vaguely blue towel in the basket underneath and takes a quick glance at herself in the mirror.

It’s. Still. There. Including the other half of her face, which is red and irritated.

“Well, you know Jen,” Kaitlyn says airily from the stall. “She’s the ultimate party animal. I think it has something to do with her kids. I think she sees these trips as a way to decompress, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, probably,” Tessa murmurs distractedly. Feeling more than a little frazzled but fiercely determined to get some more of the blue paint off before Kaitlyn has finished, she pumps another handful of vanilla soap onto her hands and leans over to rub it over her cheeks.

No more than two seconds later, her heart sinks when the toilet flushes and Kaitlyn walks out again.

This time, there’s something weird in her eyes that sends a shiver down Tessa's spine. The realization that they’re basically the mirror image of each other on top of that, blue paint and white robe included, makes her want to scream at the top of her lungs.

Kaitlyn squints at her for a second as if she's thinking about saying something but deciding not to. She resolutely turns around to the mirror, bending over to wash her hands in the sink, and Tessa tries not to breathe in the eerie silence that suddenly stretches out between them.

When she's done drying her hands, Kaitlyn straightens her spine and smiles at her one last time, purposefully letting her eyes glide over the blue side of Tessa's face. Her voice is colder than any Scottish windstorm when she finally speaks again.  

“It’s going to take more than just soap to wash that off. Trust me, I've tried.”


	2. Go to rocks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They talk about it once, on the night it happens for the first time. But never again after that.

_Airport Hotel Bonus Inn, Finland_

_October 2011_

 

There’s no cuddling afterward, which Scott guesses is better for everyone involved.

At least, that’s what he’s telling himself. Yelling, more exactly. Repeatedly. With an imaginary megaphone in his head. (An image that starts driving him absolutely insane the moment he realizes the voice in his head never gets any louder, no matter how hard he’s shouting at himself up there.)

He almost wishes it were like that with the words that came out of his mouth: he wishes he wasn’t able to change the volume, to never shout again when his emotions get ahead of him, or to say something stupid he never meant to say out loud.

He hasn’t said anything stupid yet, though. In fact, there hasn’t been any talking at all either, which is probably also better for everyone involved, but that doesn’t change the fact that the silence is what’s currently winding him up even more as he stares at the TV screen on the wall opposite the two twin beds, one of which is currently occupied by his best friend and skating partner.

He was the one to put the TV on, but his gaze is refusing to focus on anything, leaving him blinking dazedly at the screen and trying to look interested in whatever the hell is happening in this rerun of an ancient episode of _Survivor_ , the only show that didn’t have Finish subtitles.

His head is throbbing. Apart from the yelling, there’s also an awful lot of flashbacks going on in his brain: a spiked drink during their press conference. Tessa’s ringing laugh at one of his stupid jokes before she left the elevator one floor below his. The fire alarm going off when he’d just dozed off. Hotel staff asking them to wait outside until they knew there was no fire. Rain. Lots of rain.

That last one was probably what did it, though he leaves room to assume it might have been the mix of vodka and orange juice that ultimately lead to both of them ending up in his hotel room together. She had an excuse, though: she didn’t bring any spare pajamas and the ones she was wearing were absolutely soaked, so she'd asked if she could borrow one of his shirts.

He'd said yes, because he was an idiot. And he had stopped thinking the moment she came out of his bathroom, his shirt barely covering her panties, because he was a double idiot.

He hadn’t felt like one for the next twenty minutes, though.

So. Rain. It’s still steadily ticking against the windows, enough to get him to sleep if it wasn’t for the yelling and the throbbing and, oh yeah, the fact that he and Tess have been avoiding each other’s eyes since Jeff Probst initiated the episode with his signature _“previously on Survivor…”_

And maybe, just maybe, the fact that they had landed themselves in the one situation they vowed at fourteen and sixteen to never end up in was caused by his inability to answer the following question: _How can you not be in love with Tessa Virtue?_

He doesn’t know. After thirteen fucking years of knowing her, he still doesn’t know, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever find the answer.

 _Because it’s right there, you blithering idiot,_ Danny would probably say.

He bans the thought of his brother from his mind as soon as it pops up, because tormenting himself is not going to help him figure out how he has to talk to his childhood friend after performing their samba vertically in the twin-size bed he’s sitting on.

“Would you go to rocks for me?”

Her voice startles him more than the fire alarm did earlier, but the only way she would be able to tell is if she actually looked at him and saw the locking of his jaw, which she can’t from what he can see after giving her a quick glance. Her eyes are glued to the screen, so he carelessly crosses his ankles and lets the air escape from between his teeth.

“Hell no. There’s no way I’m getting kicked out of a game for a million dollars just because someone made the stupid move to go to a tiebreaker and put the entire group at risk.”

Was that what he was supposed to answer? Was that what she was expecting? He can’t tell, because she’s awfully quiet, seemingly enthralled by the Tribal Council while her eyes are slowly narrowing.

Fuck. That was not what she was expecting him to say.

But hold on a minute. Since when does he care if he says the right thing or not with Tess?

“I think that’s called ‘having enough balls to make that move’ though,” she says slowly, in that calculated manner that gives absolutely nothing away of what she thinks of his answer. “Wouldn’t you reckon?”

He’s already given up on watching the screen and has resorted to staring at her, so it’s a surprise when she suddenly turns her head and looks him dead in the eye. Despite everything, he’s not able to turn away, entirely mesmerized by the small crack he sees in her appearance no one but him would be able to notice – and terrified she’ll look away again.

“Yeah, I guess. But what do I know, eh?”

She blinks, considering that answer for a moment, and diverts her gaze.

“I’ll make my decision when we get to that point, deal?” he adds jokingly, and he knows she can tell he’s just trying to lighten the mood now, but it works.

She smiles. His heart flutters. Even now, it still works.

They continue watching in the same silence that is also completely different at the same time, three times less heavy now than it was a few minutes ago – though it takes him about two and a half minutes, all that’s left of the episode, to realize that maybe all of that was just an illusion in his head.

The ending credits just start rolling over the screen when Tessa suddenly grabs the remote from the nightstand between the beds, turning off the TV and making Scott realize for the first time how so-not-quiet the room was when the TV was still on.

“No, seriously. Would you go to rocks for me?”

He unclasps his hands and lifts his head from his pillow, raising one eyebrow at her. “I – T, what does that even mean? What are you trying to say?”

If he didn’t know any better, he’d say she doesn’t know what she’s saying either. But this is Tess, and he knows better.

“I guess what I’m trying to say is that…”

 _Oh, lord almighty_ , he thinks, because whatever it is she’s about to spit out, he can tell he’s not going to like it. It’s that thing she does with her teeth and her lips, probably not consciously, that he’s learned to take as a warning.

Having propped himself up on his elbow, he raises his brow a little higher, giving her the last push that sends her over the edge.

“Okay, what I’m saying is, would you quit skating for me if it were to come to that?”

Silence. A crushing one this time.

He knows exactly what this is, though it’s not how he expected her to initiate it: it’s The Big Talk they’d been avoiding for an entire episode, the one that was bound to come up at some point. With any other girl, he might have gotten away with making a joke right about now, but Tessa isn’t any other girl. She’s not a one-night stand, nor will she ever be.

The fact that he saw this coming from miles away doesn’t lessen the impact, though. It slaps him in the face with the gentleness of a ton of bricks.

“Did you just ask me if I would ever consider quitting skating?”

He can immediately tell she wishes she’d used different words by the unspoken _shit_ that crosses her face, but there’s no taking them back now; they’re already out in the open, airborne, bacteria that will soon start infecting a festering wound.

He tries to school his face into a more neutral look, but he knows his efforts are in vain anyway, they always are. And then she’s the one breaking the silence.

“Never mind, forget I ever said that.” She blinks heavily and tries to grab the remote again, but he’s faster, snatching it from the nightstand before she can get to it.

“Hold on, no dodging tonight. Tell me what you really meant by that.”

She rolls her eyes and flops down on the mattress, but she seems to know he’s right, because she doesn’t try to take the remote from him again and stares up at the ceiling instead. A little too intensely.

“Okay,” she says hoarsely, both of her arms hanging over either side of the bed and sticking out her chin. “Would you be willing to quit skating for us? If we didn’t work out because of the skating or the other way around, would you sacrifice skating and choose us?”

Scott’s heart plummets into his stomach. He wants nothing more than to rewind to the moment when the air between them was just tense, and not about to burst like it is now, but he’s motionless on his bed, forcing himself to keep sucking air into his lungs.

What she’s asking him is impossible. She wouldn’t have asked that question in the first place if tonight hadn’t happened, he knows that. But it’s impossible. How does he answer without assuming she’s talking about them as a couple? _Is_ she even talking about them as a couple, or does she mean to ask if he’ll prioritize their friendship over their skating if it ever were to come down to it?

The remote gets pulled out of his hand and he doesn’t even notice until it’s gone. “Tess, I…”

“Just forget it, okay? Pretend I never said that in the first place.” She points the remote at the TV and the sounds switches back on, filling the room with the dramatic soundtrack of the next Survivor episode.

Scott’s chest feels like it’s about to burst. “Tess.”

“Scott,” she says, her voice flat and full of suppressed emotion.

He swallows his words right then and there, because there’s nothing that suggests anything he says will be able to change the look on her face. Well, apart from one thing, but he can’t bring himself to say it, for the same reason he still can’t answer that damn question after thirteen years.

So he turns to the TV again, but this time he watches the minutes pass by at the top of the screen.

It’s worse like this. He starts wishing she left his room straight after it happened, and then his mind presents him with the imagination in which the fire alarm never went off and she never came to his room in the first place, and every thought makes him feel a little more like an asshole.

 

* * *

 

“I probably wouldn’t go to rocks for you either,” she mutters halfway through the episode when Jeff Probst is handing the immunity necklace to the winning contestant. The rain has stopped, so even her whisper-voice sounds clear as day. “I wouldn’t take that chance. Far too risky.”

Scott shifts over his pillow to look at her silhouette, pulling the bottle cap out of his mouth he’s steadily been chewing on for the last twenty minutes and grimacing. She’s not watching anymore, even though she’s pretending to.

“Tess, you’re asking me to quit the one thing I have been doing since I was two years old. Do you even know what you’re asking of me?”

His question pierces the tension like a needle, and she turns her head.

“No, I didn’t ask you to give up anything. I only wanted to know if you would it ever came down to it.”

 _Would you?_ he wants to ask, so badly he has to press his lips together to keep the words in. _Would you really give up skating for our relationship, in whatever shape or form? Because you wouldn’t be asking me this if you wouldn’t._

That thought is what terrifies him, because he doesn’t know if he can answer the same.

How can he?

He watches her face, sees it softening when she gives him the tiniest of smiles. He wants to kiss her like she let him an hour ago, only he doesn’t know if they will ever be able to get back to that point.

“That’s okay, you know,” she says softly. “It’s not fair of me to ask you that, and you don’t owe me an answer. You don’t owe me anything.”

 _But I do_ , he thinks. _You gave me your legs. I owe you more than I could ever give you._

“I love you,” he says, because he wants her to know that even if he might not be able to show her.

The smile on her face gets a little wider, the look in her eyes a little sadder. “I love you too.”

He doesn’t reach for her, no matter how badly he wants to. They watch the rest of the episode, and when the ending credits roll over the screen once more, Tessa gets up and kisses him goodnight before she leaves his room.

It takes them until the hotel shuttle bus takes them to the airport the next morning to start talking again, but when they do, nothing is lost, nothing is broken. There’s no regret; they’ve given themselves a moment to explore what could have been, and despite the outcome, they wouldn’t take any of it back.

If anything, Scott feels like he’s gained some certainty from everything that happened the night before. He knows now that they wouldn’t work, and that they won’t unless they are both willing to put _them_ above everything else, including their skating.

And at twenty-two and twenty-four, after having suffered through two surgeries on Tessa’s legs and finally feeling like they’re gaining back their spot among the best of the world, they simply can’t.

It will take them until twenty-six and twenty-seven to realize that they never had a choice in the matter anyway.                            

 

____________________________

 

 

_Ackergill Tower Castle, Scotland_

_The last day of the GMP trip_

 

From the dining hall all the way up the four sets of stairs (one of which is a spiral staircase) to the main tower of the castle where their rooms are located, it’s about a two-minute trek, one that can turn into a ten-minute scavenger hunt through the castle if you lose track of exactly which stairs you’re taking. It’s also how long Tessa stays seated at the table on their last night in Scotland after she’s already told Kaitlyn and Scott she’s going up with them to pack her bags.

Kaitlyn hadn’t acted at all weird for the last five days of their trip, which almost convinced Tessa she’d just imagined the way her voice had sounded in the bathroom. Even Scott had seemed fine, engaging in the conversations around him and trying to involve Tessa whenever he saw the opportunity, all of which could mean one of two things; either that whole debacle on the beach had just been a very lucid dream, or everyone is doing a fantastic job of pretending like everything is fine when it’s not.

Still, better to be safe than sorry; she stays and chats with Jen and Johnny Reid, suddenly developing a burning passion for everything guitars and the logistic side of touring the world that will prevent her from running into either Scott or Kaitlyn upstairs.

Her lips are moving, her face is bright and happy, but internally she’s counting the seconds until she can get out of here and start packing her suitcase.

One minute. They’re probably halfway up the stairs by now.

Two minutes. Jen asks if she wants to split dessert and Tessa says yes before even knowing what's on the menu for tonight.

Three minutes.

Four minutes.

Five.

Six.

Seven. Dessert arrives. Sticky toffee pudding she can barely swallow.

Eight.

Nine.

Ten. She declines Jen’s offer to sit by the fire place and chat a little longer, giving the others at the table a little wave and getting up from her seat.

_Finally._

The trip to her room takes her a minute and a half, a personal record and also the first time since they’d arrived that she doesn’t get completely lost in the maze of corridors upstairs. She stays and listens for any sounds in the hallway before she pulls the room key out of her pocket, twisting it in the lock and stepping inside.

The inside of her room, far more spacious than necessary with high ceilings, carpeted floors and a lot of ambiance lights, feels like the closest thing to home right now. The last set of clean towels is laid out on the bed, as are a few bottles of shampoo and conditioner to replace the ones Scott had stolen from her when they first got here.

Well, technically, he hadn’t _stolen_ them. Tessa had passed them on out of habit, knowing he never travels with a supply of toiletries that will last him until the trip is over.

She drops her clutch and jacket on the bed, slipping into the bathroom to take a hot shower because she knows she won’t have time before they’re off to the airport tomorrow, and comes back out feeling a little more like herself again. Ready to tackle the task of packing her suitcase, she drops the toiletries she’s already collected from the bathroom on the duvet, and that’s when her gaze finally falls on the nightstand.

Oh, he did _not_.

She picks up the card with a giant T on the front and flips it over, already shaking her head before she’s even read the message inside. When she does, she knows immediately Scott could’ve been the only one to write that down on what’s no more than an Ackergill Tower Castle breakfast menu hastily folded into two.

_I had the time of my life fighting dragons with you._

Nothing more, just that: the cheesiest, most romcom-worthy lyrics he could have picked, half of them smudged where his hand rubbed over the wet ink. She flips the cards around again, looking for something more, until she finds the words tucked away in the corner: _Seeing as you pretend not to listen to country, you’ll never know I stole that from a song._

She snorts. Loudly. This is the most Scott-like thing he’s ever done, especially with those lyrics, because he only would have picked those if he knew for sure _she_ would know the song.

And she does. Of course she does. Sinking down on the bed, the smile on her face fades for a moment and she feels a sting in her chest; this has been a year in the making, if not longer, but that day on the beach must’ve pushed him over the edge. This is him trying to tell her it’s okay if they go their separate ways, because they’ll always have the memories they made when it was still just the two of them against the rest of the world.

Well, _fuck_ that. No matter what happened on that beach, she's not leaving Scotland like this.

Pulling her phone from her clutch, Tessa drops the card on the bed and presses his name in her contact list. He picks up on the second ring.

“Virtch?”

“Scott, you are an idiot.”

It takes him less than a second of stunned silence to realize what she’s talking about. “I take it you saw my card?”

“Yes, I did.” She stares at the wall opposite her, the one she imagines he’s on the other side of in this very moment, though the silence would suggest otherwise. “How did you even put that on my nightstand? Did you bribe some cleaning lady to break in or something?”

There’s a sound in her ear that sounds a little too much like he’s trying not to laugh. “Tess, hotel rooms aren’t very hard to break into when the door isn’t locked."

Shit.

"No worries," he adds, clearly picking up on her silence. "I told someone from the staff to lock it after me.”

“Okay, fine,” she says, trying to pretend like her cheeks aren’t turning scarlet, which he can’t tell over the phone anyway. “But Taylor Swift? Seriously? And what does all of that even mean? Do we just stop being friends now?”

He sighs, followed by a few seconds of silence and – are those voices in the background?

She turns toward the door of her room, listening intently for any voices in the hallway, but there’s only silence.

Her gaze turns back to the wall. “Scott, where the hell are you?”

“Back in the lounge area downstairs. I still have to pack my suitcase but Kait wasn’t feeling well, so I let her get some rest.”

So _that_ explains the eerie silence on the other side of the wall.

“And about that card… I just didn’t know how to tell you, okay? So yes, I used some cheesy-ass lyrics because I couldn’t find the right words, but I really mean it. And I’m sorry for what happened on the beach.” A short pause. “Tess?”

 _Okay, that’s it_ , she thinks, pressing the end button on her phone and jumping off the bed before she can change her mind. She trails all the way back to the lounge area in her pajamas and with wet hair, flashing a smile at anyone who’s still leaving the dining hall when-

There, frowning down at his phone in the corner of the room next to the fireplace: Scott. He’s freshly showered as well and wearing Ackergill Tower Hotel slippers on his feet, a book in his lap Tessa knows he has been reading since before Sochi.

She’s halfway across the room before he even notices her, raising his head and locking eyes with her in the dimly lit lounge. Her throat feels like a tennis ball is stuck inside but she ignores it, taking the last few steps that separate them and demonstratively holding up her phone to him.

“It’s 2015. You don’t get to break up with me over the phone.”

He presses his lips together to keep himself from laughing, probably because she looks a little insane with the wet, messy hair and bunny pajamas. “T, don’t be dramatic.”

“I’m not being dramatic, using Taylor Swift lyrics is.” She drops down on the chair next to him, but by the time she’s locked eyes with him again, a grin is already tugging at her lips. “Besides, we still have that song to skate to, remember?”

He lets his head fall back in the most dramatic way and slaps his hand over his eyes. “Oh, god, I completely forgot about that.”

She knows he didn’t. That’s why it’s so easy to blurt out a laugh and prod his ribs with her toe, just because she can.

His fingers close around her ankle and hold her there. "I guess that means we're still stuck with each other?"

”I hate to break it to you, but that’s exactly what it means. One line of a song is not going to change that.”

He’s trying really hard not to smile now. ”Damnit.”

She smirks, pulling her leg back and tucking it underneath her. “Good thing you don’t get to choose, eh?”


	3. Tails

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He hadn’t known they were ever going to discuss this in the sweltering heat on the side of the road in China, Tessa moments away from throwing up and their hopes of ever getting back to civilization shrinking by the second.
> 
> (Or: The Comeback Talk.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, I'm aliveeeee! Turns out writing a bachelor thesis requires more mental energy than I'd anticipated (who would've thought, right?), so it was tricky to find a moment where I still felt like poring some of that energy into creative writing. If you're still reading this one month after I posted the last chapter, I just want you to know I appreciate the hell out of you.
> 
> That said, I also have some good news. There's a lot of story left to be told, bits and pieces of which I've already written. (One of the last chapters is pretty much finalized, actually, because of course my brain decided that writing this in the right order was not going to happen.)
> 
> Anyways, do read on, and come and chat when you're done! :)
> 
> (Oh, and one more thing... we're getting close to Pyeongchang. There's going to be some Montreal stuff and flashbacks in between, but... well, let me just say, I'm flippin' excited for that chapter.)

_Beijing, China_

_August 2015_

 

Scott is halfway through his second bag of prawn crackers when he first realizes the intensifying groaning of his skating partner next to him might have something to do with the smell of prawns wafting out of the bag.

Or it could be the sun that’s been beaming down on them relentlessly for the last fifteen minutes. Or the fact that the first half of their two-hour road trip to the Great Wall of China was spent with exhaust fumes blowing in through the open car windows, before said car decided to call it quits and leave them stranded on the side of the road.

Still. It’s probably the prawns, if Tessa’s look of disgust when she glances at the bag and then up at him is anything to go by.

He grins at her through a mouthful of crackers. “I think the universe is trying to tell us something, T.”

She gives him a death glare before she groans and drops her head between her legs. “Right now, the only thing the universe is telling me is that I should _not_ have eaten that sticky tofu for breakfast.”

He grins at her hunched figure, reaching out to awkwardly pat her back with his non-greasy hand. Tessa is not the kind of person who gets carsick often, and he feels oddly helpless around her when she’s like this. He briefly considers reminding her that  _she_ was the one who was pumped when they got the message from the Olympic Committee telling them they were visiting the Great Wall, _not_ him, but he abandons that idea when he figures she probably wouldn’t appreciate any of his jokes right now.

Slightly shrugging at himself, he pops another cracker in his mouth, looking over Tessa’s shoulders at the spot where the car is stranded. Their driver and guide, Fei, has the hood propped open and has been stirring inside for a good fifteen minutes now, but with no success. He tried to help when the car first broke down, but all that did was create a cloud of disgusting exhaust fumes and no movement at all.

All in all, this is not what he expected their last day in China to look like, and he’s pretty sure Tessa didn’t either.

“Do you think it’ll make you feel better if you just throw up?” he asks, returning his gaze to his skating partner’s ash-grey face and forgetting that he’s still happily munching on the crackers until she slowly diverts her gaze from the ground to meet his eyes.

“Is that my only option? What about ‘oh, here’s some medicine that will instantly make you feel better?”

 _And you’re asking the guy who refuses to take pills when he’s dying of a fever,_ he thinks, his face splitting into a boyish grin. “I have some gum, if you want some.” She already refused his offer of prawn crackers fifteen minutes earlier, when they’d installed themselves in the dirt on the side of the road.

She pulls her face into a frown, considering his new offer. “What flavor?”

“Bubblegum.”

She instantly switches back to disgusted mode. “What is it with you and artificial gum flavors?” Shuddering, she ducks back between her knees, which can’t possibly be any more comfortable than sitting up is; he can feel sweat pooling under his own armpits, so confining all that heat to the little space between her face and her knees must feel even worse.

He thinks about telling her this, but he doesn’t. “Do you want some or not?”

“My gut says no, thank you,” she answers from behind her right knee.

His eyebrows crowd together over his eyes, and he thoughtfully puts another cracker on his tongue. His options to take her mind off of the nausea are quite limited, but he knows one thing that will probably distract her, even if it's only momentarily.

He leans over just enough to touch her knee with his, pulling a goofy face despite the fact that she can’t see him. “Is your gut saying anything else, by any chance?”

She pauses: she knows what he’s talking about. She’s just not quite ready to change lanes yet and join him on the non-nauseous side.

“Apart from _we’re trying and failing to digest you breakfast in here_? Not really.”

“No, I was thinking more along the lines of-” he starts, but she’s quick to cut him off.

“I know what you were thinking, Scott.” She pauses, her head popping back up. “I’m thinking about it too.”

A sizzle of electricity shoots through him under the intensity of her eyes and the unspoken words between them. The first time he felt that electric pulsing through him was when they agreed on moving to Waterloo at Tessa’s kitchen table when he was fifteen. The second time, right before they stepped onto the Olympic ice in Vancouver. The third time, Scotland.

He hadn’t known, before then. He hadn’t known they were ever going to discuss this in the sweltering heat on the side of the road in China, Tessa moments away from throwing up and their hopes of ever getting back to civilization shrinking by the second.

He hadn’t known in Sochi, when they watched Meryl and Charlie’s free dance score pop up on the screen backstage and Tessa’s energy imploded next to him.

He hadn’t known in the construction site that was his house in Ilderton, where he listened to his phone ringing in the other room until it switched to voicemail.

He hadn’t even known on the ice, when they were performing in shows and technically didn’t have to worry about perfection anymore, though they still did.

He knew in Scotland.

The reason for that realization wasn’t anything earth-shattering. It was the simple fact that he decided, sitting on top of a dune with a beer in his hand, to stop treating the thought that had been haunting him for months like a choice he had to make. He stopped fighting the voice in his head.

Once that defense mechanism evaporated, he was just as sure about this decision as he had been about their move to Waterloo, and about their chances of winning gold in Vancouver.

He takes a deep breath now, filling his lungs and slowly letting all the air out again, but the chirpy voice of their driver interrupts him before he can say anything.

“Car all fixed! You get in, we keep going!”

Both he and Tessa look up, Tessa glaring at the car like she can already envision where the rest of her breakfast will end up if she so much as moves from her current spot and Scott reluctant to get up because he doesn’t want to risk letting the moment pass.

Patience has never been on his side. No way in hell he’s going to wait another hour to continue this conversation.

He scrambles to his feet and gives their driver a little nod, facing Tessa again. “No offense, but you look like absolute crap, and I can tell when someone needs some fresh drinks and air conditioning.”

“You're saying?” she asks, using her hand to shield her eyes from the sun when she looks up at him.

“We need another pitstop in a place that isn’t covered in dirt. Hop in, I’m buying.”

 

* * *

 

Ten minutes later, they’re settled in a McDonald’s just off the freeway, Tessa leaning back under the air conditioning unit and Scott circling his index finger around the wet rim of his glass of ice water. The only way he was able to convince Fei to make another pitstop was by promising him a generous tip at the end of the trip and a full meal at McDonald’s, but staring at the grains in the wooden tabletop now, he’s starting to regret his decision not to wait until they're at the Great Wall.

When Fei excuses himself to go the bathroom after finally finishing his Big Mac, it takes everything in Scott not to look too eager when he leans over the table toward Tessa.     

“It’s two years. Things might go horribly wrong, and we could regret if after three months, or six, or a year.”

She smiles up at the cool air flowing from the unit above her head before directing that smile at him, not surprised that he’s continuing the conversation like they never got interrupted. “Who’s all doom and gloom now, huh?”

“It’s not ‘doom and gloom’. It’s a reality check. Every comeback sounds prettier than it actually is in reality.”

One corner of her mouth quirks up, some of the breeziness disappearing from her face. “We’re going to regret it at some point,” she says. “Or at least, in the lowest moments, we’re going to _think_ we do.” She leans forward and slides her own glass of ice water toward him, ticking it against his. “That’s why there’s two of us.”

He flashes a big grin, taking a sip from his drink. “All those medals we’re going to collect will probably help, too.”

The kick to his chin under the table is aimed so perfectly that the pain shoots all the way up to his hairline, and he lets out a half-muffled grunt as he ducks under the table to grab his leg. “I’m sure I deserved that, but care to explain what the hell that was for?”

“If that’s your attitude when you walk into Marie’s office next week, she's going to send our asses right back out,” she says, the smile tugging at her lips already betraying she knows he was joking.

Well, he was. At least, for the most part. He thinks?   

He stops himself right there and utters another grunt, almost kicking himself a second time for letting his mind even go there in the first place.

“Everything depends on the plans we make beforehand,” Tessa continues, clasping her hands together, which means as much as _this is business now_. “If we’re planning on winning the Olympics, then yes, things might go horribly wrong. We have to be in this for the right reasons. You know Marie and Patch are going to ask us that question.”

He nods, still rubbing his leg. He’s thought about what his answer would be. For him, it’s fairly simple: he needs that rigid routine of being a competitive athlete back in his life, if not for himself then for everyone around him. His latest failed relationship is only one example of how badly things derailed after Sochi, no matter how stubbornly he refused to recognize that at first.

“What would you say?” he asks, raising one brow as he eyes the woman in the corner who’s trying to get her three-year-old to stop pushing his baby brother around in the restaurant’s high chair. “When Marie asks you?”

“That we’re in it for us,” she says simply.

He takes a sharp breath and makes a snorting sound that sounds halfway between a laugh and a cry, a vivid memory of the night Kaitlyn’s car left his driveway for the last time resurfacing. She’d picked him up from the airport an hour and a half earlier, but he hadn’t said anything until the car was stationary in the driveway.

He’d stared at his shoes, briefly considering asking her how her weekend had been and cutting the tension that was keeping him from opening the car door, when he blurted out the words he had intended to keep to himself at least until he’d had a chance to discuss it with the subject herself.

“How would you feel if Tess and I went for another Olympics?”

Her reaction had been surprisingly calm considering the fact that she’d ignored every single one of his attempts to make eye contact during the hour-and-a-half drive and was sporting a passive-aggressive look an adult bear would be frightened by, but in hindsight, she probably already picked up on the signals he’d been sending her in the weeks leading up to that night without even realizing it.

She’d waited a few seconds, to calm herself down or to unsettle him even more he didn't know, before she'd fired a question right back at him.

“Don’t you like being free? Isn’t that the reason why you didn’t want to do this anymore?”

He’d been stupefied at her question, for the simple reason that he realized he couldn’t give her the answer he owed her. Free? Yeah, that was the first thing he had associated with their retirement. But after getting trapped in a vicious cycle of partying, drinking and feeling like an absolute waste of space the next morning, “free” was no longer how he felt.

Naively enough, he’d also expected being away from Tess would be freeing. He’d been wrong about that, too.          

Kaitlyn was right about one thing, though, which dawned on him when he finally locked eyes with her in the pale glow of the dome light over their heads and saw the wrong shade of green looking back at him: he didn’t want to do this anymore.

He’d said those words out loud, too.

Five minutes later, he was watching her pull out of his driveway as tears painted her face with streaks of dark-blue mascara.  

He wasn't just tired from his flight that night. He was completely drained of the energy to fight for what could have been his Forever, if only he'd tried just a little harder. But "could have been" just wasn't enough anymore. None of it was.

The memory of that night is vivid not because it hasn’t been that long, but because it hurt him more than he was expecting it to – and it still does. The blue haunts him whenever he closes his eyes at night.

“It’s something Kait said, near the end,” he says when he sees the look on Tessa’s face, even though every cell in his body wants him to shut up about this. He’s done his fair share of shutting up, and if they want to do this for the next two years, they can’t afford to shut up anymore. “She said she always felt like she was trying to catch up on seventeen years’ worth of information when you were with us. She never mentioned it, but she didn’t get half of what we were saying most of the time.”

That had killed him, too. Because out of all his break-ups, a roughly estimated ninety-nine percent involved Tessa in one way or another, and he had been convinced Kaitlyn would be the one percent that didn’t.

“Most people don’t,” Tessa says, her face soft but a hardness in her green eyes he’s pretty sure is mirrored in his hazel ones.

He laughs without actually laughing, something he’s gotten pretty good at since last February. “No, they don’t.”

Sometimes, he doesn’t get it either. Moving away from home at thirteen and fifteen didn’t make sense. Working so well with someone who’s the complete opposite of him in literally every way doesn’t make sense. Not much of anything they’ve been putting themselves through for the past seventeen years has made sense.

This comeback won’t make sense.

He knows that. To their families, it might, once they come around to the idea, but to a lot of their competitors, it won’t. They’ve achieved everything an athlete can achieve, for god’s sakes: they’ve won the _Olympics_. To any outsider, going through that again would require as much as very little sanity, but to _him_ , it's his sanity he's trying to gain back from all this.

Despite all the odds that are against them, which he _knows_ there are enough of them, they’re going to pop up out of nowhere and create havoc in the figure skating world like they’re rambunctious teens again, only this time they have seventeen years of wisdom behind them.

He relishes at the idea. He also relishes at the idea of creating that Virtue-Moir bubble again, because for some reason, one he's still trying and failing to understand, being in the bubble is easier than out of it. It’s when they put a distance between them that things get complicated, which they have, time and time again.

He’s smiling at the rim of his glass, but he doesn’t realize until he looks back up at his skating partner. "Is this the part where we talk rules? Because I have one. If one of us wants out, the other will support that decision, no matter what. No hard feelings whatsoever."

She cracks a smile over the edge of her glass. "Did you just come up that rule because you know it'll never happen anyway?"

_Dingdingdingdingding._

"Not at all," he deadpans.

She snorts, masking it by taking a small sip of water. "Fine, I'm down. Now for my rule..." She inhales deeply and lets her gaze travel around the restaurant, looking at everything but him, until she's looking at nothing but him.

"Just us. That's my rule."

If he were a little bolder than he's allowing himself to be, he'd say that's a pretty dang clear message. But it can't be.

"Just us?" he says.

"Just us," she nods. "I'll leave that open for interpretation." 

He lowers his eyes, but he can't read her mind like he wants to - like he was once able to.

"Alright, just us. I can do that." He picks one of the disposable forks off the white tray that has the rest of Fei's fries on it and crushes the plastic between his teeth. “Maybe it's appropriate to leave it up to fate, then,” he says, diverting his gaze to the woman who’s still unable to control her son and is now chasing after him, her attempts at disciplining her three-year-old not doing anything but eliciting a belly-laugh from him that makes everyone else in the restaurant look up from their lunches.

Tessa follows his gaze and makes big, questioning eyes at him when she has his attention again. “Are you going to drop a penny on the ground and let me find it or something?”

“What would be the fun in that?” He pops the fork out of his mouth and points it at the little boy who zooms past their table, barely trying to control the smirk on his face. “If that kid crashes his one-year-old brother into the wall before Fei comes back from the bathroom, we’re doing this.”

Her jaw drops, but he didn't even need that indicator to know that she finds this a terrible, horrible, no-good idea. And maybe it is.

Okay, objectively, it _definitely_ is.

“Scott, that’s _horrible_.”

He grins a little wider, encouraged by the look on her face. “I’m telling you, he’s going to push that high chair into the – OUCH, _okay_ , fine, you’ve made your point!” He grabs at his leg again to ease the pain where she hit him a second time, turning away from the kid and his mom and looking for something else, but Tessa is already pulling a penny out of the miniature pocket of her black workout leggings.

“My lucky penny,” she says as she puts it between them on the table. “Heads or tails, you decide.”

“Erm – if this penny is going to decide what we’re going to do with our lives for the next two years, we should probably decide together.”

“Fair enough.” She closes her fist around the penny and mouths _three, two, one,_ before they simultaneously blurt out  _“HEADS!”_

Both of their faces split into identical grins. Scott takes the penny from her so he can flip it in the air, part of him realizing they’re just being silly by letting a penny decide their fate, but nonetheless feeling a flutter in his belly when he balances it on his thumb and flicks it into the air.

Tessa audibly sucks in her breath. The penny bounces off the table and skitters under the seat, and Scott doesn’t think twice before he dives down onto the signature sticky McDonald’s floor to retrieve it.

The tops of his fingers find the edge of the penny first. He slowly slides it out from under the leather seat, his stomach doing a backflip when he sees which side it landed on and then turning him colder than the air conditioning has since they've been here.

“Well? Which side did it land on? Are we doing this comeback thing or not?”

He stays crouched on the floor, taking a second to school his face into the expression that is just right before he pops up from underneath the table.

“Heads. I guess we’re doing this, Virtch.”

Her face freezes in a smile, and every single emotion she's feeling is on display like he's peeking into an entire collection of color swatches in a paint shop. In the end, it’s exhilaration that makes her pull him to his feet and into her for a quick hug. “I guess we are!”

He feels weirdly distant of himself as he hugs her back, his grin disappearing in the dark waves of her ponytail. They pull back to look at each other for a moment, trying to let it dawn on them, not knowing it won't for another three years.

Once again, their moment is cut short when Fei suddenly pops up behind them.

“All finished! You get in, we keep going!”

Scott suppresses the urge to roll his eyes at the guy, letting go of Tessa and wondering if anyone's ever tried to teach him the subtle art of not ruining people's life-changing moments. When Fei turns around and starts marching to the door, they quickly gather up their stuff and head for the exit, knowing he won't wait for them.

Scott is still holding the penny in his palm when he halts to dump Fei’s Big Mac wrapper and the paper placemat in the trash, watching Tessa’s ponytail disappear behind the door and jumping when there’s suddenly a crashing sound behind him followed by a penetrating scream. He turns around to find the three-year-old from earlier still holding onto the high chair he just crashed into the wall on the other side of the restaurant.

The entire restaurant turns to look what's going on when the mother unleashes all her anger on the boy and inadvertedly his baby brother, who promptly bursts into heartbreaking tears at the shrill sound of his mother's voice. Then, and without a warning, the three-year-old suddenly turns and takes off, a split second before his mom can grab him by the collar of his shirt.

Instinctively, Scott knows he has to stop him when he sees the little boy barreling straight toward him. He quickly discards the serving tray, grabbing him under the armpits and swooping him up in his arms.

The boy freezes once more now that he's trapped in the arms of a stranger. Weirdly enough, he doesn’t really put up a fight; he just stares at Scott, something passing between the two of them that doesn’t require a mutual language to be understood.

“Here,” Scott says, pressing the penny into the boy’s greasy little hand. “Always choose tails, 'kay? The penny is heavier on the heads side, so it's more likely to land on tails. But don’t ever let your fate be decided by a penny.”

The boy just stares at him, one big tear dripping down his chin and onto Scott’s shirt. He doesn’t understand a word of what Scott is saying, but he clutches the penny in his hand like he’s just given him the most precious treasure the world has to offer.

The next moment, the little boy’s mom rips the three-year-old from Scott's arms, balancing her other sobbing child on one hip and lowering her eyes in shame. “I’m so sorry for my kids, so sorry. So sorry.” 

Scott puts a calming hand on her arm, though he's not sure to what extent he actually manages to reassure the woman. “There’s no need. I was just as much of a troublemaker when I was his age and I turned out pretty okay. Just give it a few more years.”

_And if he's anything more like me, a few more years after that._

The woman hums as she dabs at her one-year-old, clearly more worried about the chaos her son has created than anything else. Scott takes that as his cue to leave and takes a few steps back, smiling at the boy and his mom one last time before he turns around.

Tessa is holding the door open for him when he steps outside. He knows she’s trying to force his gaze to hers but he keeps walking, heading straight for the car.

“What was that all about?” she says from behind him.          

He doesn’t turn around to look at her, but he’s smiling when he replies.

“How about we get you a Chinese lucky penny, eh?”


	4. White lies and a truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Have you ever regretted what happened in Finland?

_Oak Lanes bowling alley, Canton, Michigan_

_December 2007_

Scott is on his fourth beer when Charlie notices him making eyes at the blonde-haired girl sitting in the booth next to theirs and nearly knocks the glass out of his hand by waving a twelve-pound bowling ball in his face.

“Sheee, Charles, watch out, will you?” Scott splutters as he breaks eye contact with the girl and manages to save his beer from going to waste on the carpeted floor. “You could kill someone with that thing.” He gives Charlie the light-hearted scowl he saves for special occasions only – special occasions being the rare nights on which his blood alcohol concentration levels are just high enough to put him in the giddy-over-nothing-but-still-pleasant-to-be-around state of mind.

Personally, it’s his favorite state of mind, though he knows a certain red-head prefers him soberer than this. That doesn’t stop him from enjoying a rare night out, though. The only reason why Marina allowed this one in the first place was because Fedor unexpectedly rented two lanes, whipping out some excuse that a night of bowling would be a good “team-building exercise”.        

Charlie returns the scowl, pinning the bowling ball to Scott’s chest. “I will if you watch the board. You’re up next, buddy.”

Scott takes the ball and cuts his gaze from Charlie’s bright grin and happy curls to the bowling lane behind him, just in time to watch Tanith pump her fists in the air and fall in her ice dance partner Benjamin’s arms as her six-pound bowling ball successfully knocks down the rest of her pins. They’ve gathered at the Oak Lanes bowling alley in Canton with a small group of skaters, all of whom are focused on the two lanes  _except_ for Tessa and Meryl, who are enwrapped in a heated discussion on the opposite side of the table.

There's too much noise to catch what they’re saying, but, as Scott vaguely realizes while getting up from the leather bench, the discussion isn’t so much a discussion as a one-sided rant from Meryl. Tessa is merely just staring at the glass of orange juice in front of her, nodding sporadically and looking even paler in the dark shadows of the bowling alley than she did in the rink earlier that day.

Despite the clenching feeling in his chest, he shrugs it off and turns on his heels, making his way to the right lane with a little more of a strut than he knows he can afford. He’s an absolutely terrible bowler, but so far, he’s managed not to make a complete fool of himself, which is more than he can say of Charlie.

As he positions himself in front of the lane, he notices Fedor and his six-foot-one in the corner of his eye. One look at the guy is enough to awaken an almost animalistic instinct in him and fling that ball as hard as he can, though, he must admit, the four beers have tempered his competitive drive quite a bit.

“Going for gold, Scottie?” Fedor teases with that stupid grin on his face as a full set of pins starts lowering onto the lane.

“Unlike some, yes, I am,” Scott says without missing a beat, getting in position. He tunes out the rest of the hall and the claps on his back from Benjamin as he gets ready, aiming the ball to perfection and –

Gutter.

The skaters behind him let out a series of low howls and whistles, and he makes his way to the ball return making excuses for himself with his arms in the air, making sure he sounds loud enough to make up for the bullshit that's coming out of his mouth. He returns with the heaviest ball, getting nothing but a skeptical eyebrow raise and a small grin from Fedor this time.

The pins lower onto the lane, and Scott briefly glances over his right shoulder to see if he can spot the blonde in the next booth again. He can’t; instead, his eyes meet Tessa’s, who's clearly been keeping an eye on him but who blinks when he catches her and suddenly pretends like she wasn’t.

He lifts the ball, shaking his head to regain his composure and focusing on the lane (which is a just a pretty way of describing his attempt to stop the pins in the distance from moving around with the sheer force of his mind).

God, he should have known this was going to be harder after drink number four.

Faking a level of concentration the buzz in his ears simply doesn’t allow, solely because he knows Fedor is watching him (and, possibly, the pretty blonde in the next booth), he screws up his face and leans over.

_Shoot straight, Moir. Fucking straight._

He flings the ball toward the pins, but clearly the message of shooting straight went south somewhere between his brain and his hands, because the ball starts swerving almost immediately and only takes down three of the pins on the far left.

Oh, fuck it. Third time’s a charm, eh?

When he prepares himself for his last attempt, Tessa’s head is down and her eyes are no longer on him, but the added pressure of saving his reputation as not being the most terrible bowler in Canton allows him to focus just long enough to make a good shot. He takes out the rest of the pins, earning him a spare and a score that will be enough to place him second-to-last above Charlie on the score board.

“CHUCKIIEEEEE!!” he bellows triumphantly as he starts back toward their table, pumping one fist in the air and giving the curly-haired skater a shove as he passes him. Charlie shoves him back just as hard, ringing out his ever-cheerful laugh and trotting over to the ball return with a spring in his step.

Scott picks up his glass where he left it on the table and squeezes himself in the fifteen inches of space next to Tessa. “’sup, ladies,” he says loudly, ignoring the way Tessa goes rigid at the feel of him and casually wrapping an arm around the leather seat – a kind of casual that probably looks anything but casual because of the way he peers over the edge of their booth to check if the blonde is back yet.

She is. Her bright, brown eyes meet his over the red leather seat with a surprising fierceness, almost like she’d been waiting for him. It’s a look that sobers him up more than a little as he swallows and flashes her a grin.

It’s only when it dawns on the other part of his consciousness how his _‘sup, ladies_ was met with a cold silence that he breaks the eye contact and turns to Tessa, who looks anything but impressed when she crosses her arms in front of her.

“Was your big plan for tonight to get drunk?” she asks quietly, pointing her eyes at the drink in his hand. She doesn’t sound mad or accusatory, but then again, she never really does; it’s her eyes that usually deliver the punch of the message, which is painfully clear in his case.

“As long as I can still beat Chuckie, I’ll be alright, Virtch,” he says, chuckling a little under his breath. At least her annoyance is caused by the drinking and not by the fact that he’s been eye-flirting with a girl the entire night, which isn’t even something she’s allowed to get annoyed about, is it?

He’s still pondering on that thought when his gaze slides to Meryl, and he gulps loudly. “Good _lord_ , what’s going on with you?”

Streaks of mascara have come down Meryl’s cheeks, who abruptly straightens her spine and dives into her bag for a tissue. Tessa hands her one when she emerges from the bag empty-handedly, her gaze already returning to Scott, who is still waiting for an explanation.

Which, he realizes when Tessa’s green eyes pierce his, he’s not getting.

“It’s none of your business, Scott,” she says, even more quietly than a moment ago. “She’s just going through some stuff, alright?”

 _And she couldn’t have picked a better spot to have an emotional breakdown than the most public place to be at on a Friday night?_ he thinks, but he feels immensely grateful to still have enough self-control to keep those words to himself. He raises his hands apologetically and even feels a tad guilty when Meryl gets up next and excuses herself to go to the bathroom.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen her look _that_ horrible,” he murmurs to Tessa before he can stop himself when they watch her back disappear in the crowd.

She whips her head around and gives him a sharp jab in his ribs.

“ _What?_ Fucking hell, Virtch, that was a compliment!”

“In what sick, twisted universe was that a compliment, Scott?”

“The one where I meant to say she looks quite alright on a normal day. _That’s_ what I meant to say, it just came out wrong.”

She glowers at him, which is the most reaction he’s gotten out of her all night. “Yeah, well, things tend to come out wrong with you, don’t they?”

“And what is _that_ supposed to mean?” He doesn’t quite know whether to be amused or irritated when he puts his beer down, and he still hasn’t made up his mind when her eyes find his again.

“You know exactly what I mean. But just forget about it, it doesn’t matter.” She leans over to sip on her orange juice and refuses to acknowledge his gaze for the next two minutes, causing him to give up with a sigh and twist in his seat so he can watch what's happening in the two lanes.

He isn’t really watching the other skaters, though. Through the fuzziness of four beers’ worth of alcohol, he’s trying to come up with a reason why Tessa joined their bowling outing in the first place. She usually avoids these things like the plague, whether it be with some lousy excuse that her housemate needs a ride or no excuse at all.

It didn’t use to be like that, though. When they first started training in Canton, she joined in on all the group activities. It’s only in these last few weeks that she’s dodged all of their attempts to have a night out.

 _Except_ for tonight.

So what’s different about tonight?

He turns slightly to look at her, catching her scrunching up her nose in a moment of unexpected vulnerability when she thinks no one’s watching her.

He’s seen that face before. Until now, he hadn’t realized exactly how good he knows that face, because she doesn’t ever show it; not when they’re in the midst of their intense training sessions, not when they’re having a laugh after a good day of practice. It’s only when she thinks no one’s watching that it appears, but he is watching now, and he knows that face.

She’s hurting.

She rubs her right leg once, twice, then looks up at him. Fear momentarily flickers in her eyes and her hands freeze.

The next moment, Meryl slides back onto the bench, every trace of her breakdown earlier erased apart from the obvious puffiness of her eyes. Scott doesn’t spare her more than a glance before his attention returns to Tess, realizing that Meryl is not the only one who’s been keeping a secret. Tessa is just not the kind of person who will make a public deal of it.

“Tess, can I-”

“It’s my turn,” Tessa blurts, her face suddenly perking up in a happy smile as she gets up from her spot to squeeze past him. There’s not a trace of pain left, but then again, she refuses to meet his eyes again, and her eyes usually hold the truth when the rest of her doesn’t.

He stands before she can head to the ball return. “Tess, is everything alright?”

He makes sure to keep his voice down in case this is really something she wants to keep private, but she flinches as though he’s yelled the words for the entire bowling alley to hear and briskly turns around.

“Everything is _fine_ , Scott. What’s the matter with you?”

At least three sets of eyes that include Fedor’s are on him and Tess now, and the other skaters are glancing around as well, except for Charlie, who’s too busy squinting up at the score board. Scott drops the hand that’s holding Tessa’s arm, not sure what to do as he’s already halfway out of his seat and not nearly as giddy anymore as he felt ten minutes ago.

Everything is not fine. The thing she just did – _reversed psychology?_ – tells him that whatever she’s not telling him really is something serious, and if that's the case, the middle of a crowded bowling alley is not the right place nor the right time to have that conversation with her.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” he says after a silence that’s three seconds too long.

His answer throws her off for a split second, but she flicks her hair over her shoulder when Fedor touches her elbow and takes the bowling ball he's handing her with another too-bright smile.

And there it is. The reason why tonight is different.

Tonight is the first night Fedor’s ever joined them.

Scott doesn’t wait to see if she lands a strike. He swivels around and slips through the crowd, only vaguely aware of the screams of joy behind him when he shuffles past the bar and into the bathroom area.

When the blonde girl from the booth next to theirs nearly runs into him on her way out of the ladies’ and perks up at the sight of him, he doesn’t even recognize her as the girl he’s been flirting with all night. 

 

____________________________

 

 

_Gadbois, Montreal_

_September 2016_

 

“A little deeper. Yes, just like th- make sure to keep that knee stable, hips locked in. Just a _little_ deeper.”

“That’s what she said, Maria!” Scott lets out in his characteristically loud, hardest-and-least-favorite-part-of-his-workout growl as he whacks the ropes down onto the mat, eliciting a snort from Tessa she can’t pass off as a kink of the treadmill even if she’d wanted to.

Her eyes flick from her own reflection in the mirror to the corner of the hall where Scott is man-handling the 30-pound ropes like he’s preparing to murder someone. The latter has nothing to do with the ropes but everything with his face, which is so contorted from sheer focus and exhaustion that he could quite probably scare a 700-pound grizzly bear.       

His eyes meet hers in the mirror for a mere second, the steady sound of her shoes hitting the belt beneath her, and she knows exactly what he’s thinking: _if it weren’t for the Olympics, I would be standing in the Bell Center queuing for a beer and a hotdog right now._

Only three months into their comeback, she’s anything but surprised that Scott’s mood is down; this is exactly what they were prepared for.

Today is just One of Those Days. She knew it when he arrived at her place that morning and decided to honk her out of her apartment instead of sending his usual good-morning-I’m-outside text, which could’ve prevented the inevitable outburst of rage from her neighbor Harry, who started drumming his fists against the wall between their apartments in an attempt fight the noise outside with even more noise.

(Right before she ran out of the door, she’d caught the words “TELL YOUR DAMN BOYFRIEND TO KEEP IT DOWN OR HE’S GOING TO REGRET COMING HERE AGAIN”, which she’d decided to ignore.)

(In fact, she’s pretty positive the vast majority of the people who live in her apartment building think she’s together with the guy who keeps picking her up in his black sports car at six in the morning and drops her off again twelve hours later, when the result of their long and intense days at the rink is enough to fill in the rest of the blanks.)

(She’s not, though.)

When Scott’s hand slapping down onto the side of the treadmill snaps her out of her daze, she gasps loudly and yanks one earbud out of her ear.

“Jesus Christ, Scott! Care to warn me first next time?”

“Just making sure you’re not dozing off, T. Wouldn’t want you falling off and hurting yourself.”

She flashes him a grimace, one that turns into an eye-roll at his back when he steps onto the treadmill next to her. He’s been cracking jokes – _awful_ jokes – since their stop at Tim’s that morning, but there’s been a growl in his voice the entire day, and she doesn’t think he’s even noticed. He’s too warped up in whatever is bothering him today, something that has been bothering him since…

Well, probably since the night of his birthday. At least, that’s when she got the first 4 a.m. text – the one she hadn’t responded to – and while there used to be a time when she would blame his bad mood on herself, she doesn’t believe her eerie silence to a virtual message is the reason why he’s been so irritable lately.

They just don’t really text for non-practical reasons. And the subject of that text was anything but practical.

She watches him from the corner of her eye now as he adjusts the pace on his treadmill, making sure to hide the fact that her eyes are on him. She doesn’t want to give him any more reasons to get antsy again. When he’s eventually found the right pace, she pops the earbud back in her ear, her entire surroundings drowned out by the voice of Belinda Carlisle.

A moment later, her favorite 80s playlist still blasting in her ears, she reconsiders, a sly smile tugging at a corner of her mouth.

“If you keep cracking godawful jokes like that, I’m holding you accountable for my inevitable distraction. You need to up your game, Moir, _big_ time.”

His face freezes, which she can see in the mirror, but she can’t tell if he sucks in his breath over the _OOOOOHH, HEAVEN IS A PLACE ON EARTH_ in her ears – though, if she knows him well enough (and she does), he probably did.

Then, his face splits into the first genuine grin she’s seen of him today.

He lowers his middle finger back onto the control panel of the treadmill, jabbing the button that controls his pace. “Tell you what, I’ll race ya.”

She can’t help but give him a grin in return. “You’ll have to catch up with me first.”

 

* * *

 

One hour later, when she is the last one to get done with their post-workout treatment – she’s always the last one – Scott barely drags himself out of the room before he collapses dramatically onto the floor, arms and legs spread wide like a starfish.

“Please tell me you’re as dead as I am after today,” he says, surprising her by suddenly reaching out to clutch her ankle when she goes to step over him.

She stops in her tracks, slowly raising the towel in her neck to wipe her forehead and staring down at the spot where his fingers are curled around her ankle. Is she right in assuming he’s developed a bit of an ankle fetish since Scotland, or is his bad temper just making him incessantly needy today? She doesn’t seem to remember him doing this before they had their little whatever-it-was on the beach last year, but she can’t really say she doesn’t like it.

Actually, she doesn’t particularly mind when he doesn’t immediately let go, either, which makes her forget about what he said for all of two seconds.

Weird.

“I’m just as pooped as you are,” she says, covering her entire head with the towel and pulling it flat over her hair. It’s easier to lie to him when he can’t see her face – and really, this doesn’t even constitute as a proper lie: it’s only a white lie to keep him from feeling even worse about himself after a bad day. It’s basically included in her duties as skating partner.

His grip on her ankle loosens, so she steps over him. “C’mon, let’s get going. Day off tomorrow,” she reminds him as she walks to the end of the hallway, turning in the doorway to watch him getting to his feet.

He lulls his head back, letting out a loud yelp. The hallway is empty, thankfully, but the sound is so loud that it reverberates into the next hallway.

They make their way back to the changing rooms, briefly parting ways to change into some clean clothes and meeting up again at the front desk, where Tessa is just pulling the package toward her when Scott rounds the corner with his bag over his shoulder.

She hastily yanks the envelope out of Chris the maintenance manager’s hands before Scott can read the name of the sender in the front, which, given his history with being left out of things, she knows is a stupid move before she’s even tucked the envelope under her arm. She gives him her brightest smile when he creases his forehead, his eyes focusing on whatever it is she’s hiding from him behind her back, and chirps a cheerful goodbye at Chris before turning swiftly on her heels.

Scott, of course, doesn’t even let her reach the double doors before he’s caught up with her.

“Okay, T, I’m fully aware of the fact that we're not exactly known for our acting skills, but that was some seriously bad deflecting you just did. What’s in the envelope?”

“None of your business,” she replies, shouldering open the door but not quite managing to get the smug smile off her face. They both step outside, where they’re met with a cold, pre-fall gust of wind, and a violent shiver runs straight up her spine.

Her smile turning into a frown, she warily looks up at the cloudy sky. Montreal isn’t going to go easy on them for their first winter here, is it?

“T, you know you can tell me anything. If there’s a body, just tell me where to pick it up and I’ll hide it. They’ll never find out.”

Rolling her eyes before she can stop herself, she continues toward his car at the far end of the parking lot. “If you really thought I was capable of murdering someone, you never would’ve befriended me in the first place. Your offer is highly appreciated, though.”

He murmurs something unintelligible behind her but stays quiet the rest of the way to his car. The thing about Scott, though, is that you don’t exactly have to hear him explain his feelings or watch them take shape on his face to know what he’s thinking; he exudes enough energy at any given time to accurately feel his mood in a ten-yard radius, which is edging on exasperated right in this very moment.

When she’s reached the driver’s seat, she turns around, holding out one hand. “If you let me drive, I might tell you what’s in the envelope. But only if you’ll let me drive, and you don’t get to ask any questions – especially not about the content of the envelope.”

He’s stopped a few feet away from her, his patience and curiosity fighting an obvious battle on his face. Eventually, he he gives in and digs his keys out of his bag.

“Fine. I get one question, though, and I want nothing but the truth.”

She presses her lips together.

“The car is _brand new_ , Tessa.”

She utters a sigh, ignoring the fact that that was an obvious dig at her driving skills, and agrees to let him ask one single question. She fumbles to catch the keys when he chucks them at her, feeling the heat flaming up her cheeks as she slips into the red leather interior of Scott’s car.

When he’s pulled the passenger door closed behind him and has dumped both of their bags in the backseat, she realizes for the first time that he could ask her the most obvious question, one that has absolutely nothing to do with any of this:  _Why didn’t you reply to the text I sent you on the night of my birthday?_ That realization comes too little too late, though, because the words are already out of his mouth before she has the chance to open hers – but it’s not what she was expecting.

“Has anyone ever had to remind you that it was my birthday in the seventeen-something years we’ve known each other?”

She gapes at him in stunned silence for three seconds before finding her voice again. Though she was right about the theme of his question – birthday – she never could’ve guessed he would ask something so… trivial.

“Okay, was _not_ expecting that one. But no, I haven’t. Can I ask _why_ you’re asking me that when you obviously could’ve asked something more interesting regarding the mystery envelope?”

His eyes dart to the dashboard, where the envelope is tucked under the windshield. When they fix back on hers, there’s a smile at the corner of his mouth. “If I only get one question, you only get one as well. Sure you want to waste it on that?”

She narrows her eyes at him and chews on the inside of her lip. “Well…”

_No. You don’t, do you?_

“’kay. Nothing but the truth, huh?”

“Cross my heart.” He pretends to spit on his hand and stretches it out toward her, and as she grabs it, her heart wobbles in her chest.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

Scott’s face goes blank, just like hers probably did a few seconds ago, and if she weren’t so eager to hear his truthful answer, she probably would’ve found it funny how they still manage to surprise each other after all these years.

“I’m… okay,” he says eventually. “Just tired, right on schedule with your and Marie’s predictions.”

She gives his hand a little squeeze, letting it go and grabbing the steering wheel. She wants to grin and tell him to buckle up when he adds, more silently, “I’m not really sleeping that well, though. But I guess that was to be expected as well, right?”

Her hands slide off the steering wheel and into her lap. At this point, the discourse about the envelope and the reason why she’s sitting in the driver’s seat is merely still an afterthought, while the thing that’s currently very real is an overdue check-up on each other.

“Scott, remember that bucket of rice you left on my doorstep that one time? We haven't taken anything out of it. There's no reason to panic because you’re having a bad day three months into this comeback.”

“Panicking? Who said anything about panicking?”

Everything about his behavior does, from his wide eyes to his obvious denial about the fact that he’s panicking, but she doesn’t say that out loud and cocks her head instead. “Getting back into shape is a pain in the butt. Have you tried going for a drive when you can’t sleep? Dad used to do that when we were kids, worked like a champ every time.”

“Except I’d be the one behind the wheel, which makes it an absolutely terrible idea,” he says, a light flickering in his eyes.

“Right,” she says. “So, sit back, relax, and enjoy the view. I’ll tell you what the envelope is about when we get there.”

“Get where?”

She smirks as she turns the key in the ignition and pulls out of the parking space. “Sorry, no more questions.”

For a moment, it looks like he’s going to switch into bickering mode, which she could hardly hold against him if he did, but in the end, he settles back in his seat and lets her take them to the road. She takes one more glance at him to make sure he’s really making himself comfortable before she resolutely takes the opposite turn of the one that will take them straight home. He hardly bats an eye.

Twenty minutes later, when she somehow manages to find a parking spot in the indoor parking facility near the Bell Center that’s already overflowing with red-blue-and-white hockey jerseys, he’s batting no eyes at all anymore. His seat is reclined to maximum capacity and he has one arm propped up against the window, the other one resting on his chest and his face probably the most peaceful she’s seen it since they got back from Beijing.

She quietly turns off the engine, the mass of people moving outside seemingly belonging to a different world than the little bubble they’ve created for themselves inside the car – one Scott is absolutely and blissfully unaware of. She gives herself a second to let her eyes glide over his face, just because there is absolutely no one but her conscious to tell her she shouldn’t, and slips her phone out of her pocket.

6:30 p.m. She can totally let him sleep for another fifteen minutes.

As she declines her own seat just a little bit and shakes out her jacket to use as a blanket, she reaches for the envelope on the dashboard that contains the tickets for the game. With a smile, she leans over to put it on his chest.

“Happy belated birthday to you, kiddo.”

 

* * *

 

Initially, the fuzzy part of Scott’s brain that hasn’t been woken up yet writes off the sound as the pounding footsteps of his upstairs neighbor, who has a habit of pacing through his apartment late at night for whatever reason. Bit annoying, but nothing out of the ordinary, and he’s pretty much used to it now anyway.

When the following blow right next to his ear physically makes him jump and crash his knee into the dashboard, though, he realizes with a start that he’s not in his own apartment, let alone in his own bed, and that the obviously drunk guy hammering on the car window is going to punch straight through the glass if he doesn’t react within the next two seconds.

He shoots up in his chair, fumbling to discard of the envelope that’s suddenly in his lap and reaching for the door handle. Tessa stirs awake next to him, blinking up from underneath the jacket that’s draped over her with the kind of terror in her eyes that can only be caused by a drunk guy waking you up with the sound of his fists next to your ear.

“What’s going on, man?” Scott growls as he pushes open the car door into the guy’s chest, remembering with remarkable lucidity that he can’t roll down the window when the keys are not in the ignition. “Is there a problem?”

The guy who stares back at him is three times his size and has probably consumed enough alcohol to last him another week. And, Scott registers in the back of his mind, he’s wearing a Montreal Canadians jersey.

“Yuh,” the guy grunts. “My wife’s trying to back out. Care to move the pretty car so we can leave, please?”

Even with the intoxicated look in his eyes, the guy still manages to live up to Canadian politeness standards, but he obviously doesn’t care enough to stick around any longer than he has to. He walks around the front of Scott’s car to the parking space next to theirs, where his still-sober wife has somehow managed to squeeze her massive Chevrolet Traverse into the tightest parking space possible.

Tessa, having woken up entirely now, hastily tosses her jacket into the backseat and starts the engine, cursing slightly under her breath as she starts to back out of the parking spot. It’s the cursing that throws Scott off more than the waking up in an unknown place did.

“T? You alright there?”

 _And care to tell me where the fuck we are?_ he wants to add, but he swallows his question when his attention shifts to their surroundings and, combined with the hockey jerseys he sees everywhere and the increasingly familiar-looking indoor car park, finally manages to make sense of what’s happening.

“The _game_?" His head abruptly snaps back to Tessa. " _That’s_ where you brought us?”

“Was _meant_ to bring us,” she corrects him, her brow furrowed in concentration as she navigates the cluster of cars trying to escape the car park. “Damnit. Freaking _damnit_.”

“T?” he says again, not even bothering with an additional question this time. His eyes lower to the spot by his feet where he’s dropped the envelope and he picks it up, not even asking for permission before he rips it open and pulls out two tickets to the Montreal Canadians vs. Ottawa Senators game.

Enthusiasm rushes to his throat and bursts out of his mouth before he can stop himself. “You got us _tickets_?!”

She locks her jaw, and he understands why when her words finally register.

Was _meant_ to.

“The game is already over, isn’t it?” He sinks back in his seat with the tickets in his hands, looking longingly at the red-blue-and-white hockey jerseys that are still spilling into the parking lot as they join the line that’s waiting to exit the car park.

Tessa lets out a joyless laugh, her shoulders deflating. “I can’t believe we missed it! I freaking can't! The one time I try to surprise you with a late birthday present…” She briefly cuts her eyes to his, regret painted all over her face. “I’m so sorry, Scott. World's worst friend right here, I'll totally own up to it.”

His breath catches in his throat, because he doesn’t even know what to say. The last thing he remembers is telling himself not to fall asleep in the car next to her, which is obviously exactly what happened, so it’s not like he feels he missed out on the game. Besides, the three-hour nap he just took was the best three hours of sleep he’s gotten in a week.

“Don’t be sorry, T,” he says, adjusting his seat so he's sitting up straight again. “I just feel bad you spent money on those tickets. If you tell me how much I owe you, I'll make sure to transfer the money first thing tomorrow”

An explosive laugh escapes her throat. “You know, the idea behind a birthday present is that you receive it without reimbursing the person who gave it to you. You owe me absolutely nothing.”

“Of course I do,” he says without thinking, not realizing how she could interpret that differently until he sees her face going serious.

“No, Scott, you don’t,” she says. “Neither of us do. You know that.”

He shrugs his shoulders and leans back against the window. He’s suddenly too hot to keep his hoodie on but too aware of the weird atmosphere in the car to unzip it, so he sits there hoping he doesn’t smell until they get out of the car park. After she mutters something that sounds like “guess we’ll just go home, then”, he makes an effort to bop his head to every song that comes on the radio, but every movement feels like he’s pulling his own puppet body’s strings, right up until the moment she parks the car in front of his apartment building.

“I'll drop you off at home,” he says when the car is stationary and the engine has gone silent. It’s no more than a seven-minute walk to Tessa’s apartment building, but the stories he’s heard about her intrusive neighbor Harry make him uncomfortable just at the thought of letting her walk home by herself.

She drops the car keys in his hand, already shaking her head. “There’s no need,” she says, but there’s something in her eyes that makes the skin of his forehead prickle.

Then, it suddenly clicks.

_Fuck._

This is about that stupid text, isn’t it?

About two weeks ago, him and his stupidly intoxicated mind had decided his birthday night would be the perfect opportunity to ask her the question he’d been wanting to ask her ever since it happened five years ago. Over time, he’d thought of enough reasons why it would be more beneficial for literally every aspect of his life to never bring it up ever again, but all of that conviction had gone out the window together with his integrity once his birthday bash with his hometown crew was in full swing. He'd considered removing the text the next morning, but what good would that do when she’d already seen it and clearly decided it wasn’t worth replying to?

He barely manages to keep himself from putting his head through the car window and copies Tessa’s movements instead when she swings open the car door and steps outside. She’s already grabbed her bag and hoodie from the backseat before he can keep her from leaving.

“Tickets are on me for the next game,” she says, swinging the bag over her shoulder and walking backward to give him a little wave.

“Hotdogs are on me,” he replies, stuffing his hands in his pockets. He shoots her a grin, which she returns.

His hands restlessly dig around in his pockets for a few seconds. By the time the words escape his mouth, she’s already walking further down the sidewalk, but she stops in her tracks.

“If you’re feeling restless on your day off tomorrow, just let me know and I'll get you that hotdog.”

The street lamp behind her illuminates her entire face when her eyebrows shoot up in surprise, but her reaction is only fleeting. She presses her lips together, backing up and nodding slowly in a way that could have a bazillion different meanings and drives him absolutely insane as she turns and continues on her way, giving him another wave over her head but not turning around again.

 

* * *

 

When her text lights up his screen four hours later, it's pure luck that he's even awake to see it.

The first thing his brain registers is the time. 4:15 a.m.

Next, the realization that she's waited exactly three weeks to answer the question that completely silenced their text messages.

_Not once._

They're only two words, but he reads them well over fifteen times before he lets out a strangled breath and flops onto his back.

And then he bursts out laughing.

Because Tessa Virtue is a lot of things, but Queen of Ambiguity is not one of them.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Might fool around and add another (shorter) chapter about their comeback after this... (not today, though). We'll see ;)


	5. Kiss and never tell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scott is nine-almost-ten when his mom finally lets him go to the movies by himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Long time no see. Life's been busy. Like, HELLA busy. The kind you hear about from other people but you never think you can be that busy yourself. Guess what? Turns out I could be that busy. And for some reason, these next two chapters didn't let me write them, despite the fact that I planned them out from start to finish.
> 
> Actually, now that I think about it... I probably prefer chapters that just "happen" over planned chapters anyway.
> 
> That being said, I know it's been a rocky few months in the fandom in general. I'm not going to say much about it because I don't feel like this is the right place for that, but I hope you people out there will still enjoy this - and even if you don't... Imma keep writing it anyway, hehe.
> 
> Just be kind to others. Be compassionate. And don't feel guilty for wanting to escape to the world of fiction every once in a while ;)

_Ilderton, Ontario_

_August 1999_

Scott is nine-almost-ten when his mom finally lets him go to the movies by himself.

Coincidentally, it’s also the day he tastes beer for the first time.

He’s sitting on his doorstep in a Leafs jersey and a baseball hat that covers his blond buzz cut, the sun beaming down in his neck and the dull sound of farmers plowing somewhere behind him. It’s the sound that reminds him the end of summer is inching closer, fast and steadily, bringing with it the end of the freedom he’s only recently managed to pushed the boundaries of. 

Pulling up his cap and flopping it back down repeatedly, he continues the relentless attack on the piece of bubblegum between his teeth, checking his watch for the thousandth time. The movie is starting in ten minutes, and while the Ilderton Community Center is barely three bike peddles away from his front door, he already feels annoyed that the best seats are going to be long gone by the time they get there.

He flips the cap around, putting it backwards on his head, and utters a long sigh - and as if sensing his pending outburst of frustration, Tessa’s bright pink bike comes zooming onto the driveway moments later, stopping inches away from his new kicks.

“Hey, watch it! They’re brand new!” He jumps up and away from her in an attempt to protect his precious new shoes but ends up tripping on the concrete instead, sending himself flying into the dirt of his mother’s freshly watered tulips.

Oh, marvelous.

Cursing lightly under his breath, he grunts and looks up. Tessa’s cheeks match the color of her bike and her hand is covering her mouth, but he can tell she’s laughing at him anyway.

“We’re going to be late,” he grunts as he pushes past her, picking up his own bike where he left it on the ground next to the tulips. “MOM, WE’RE LEAVING,” he shouts in the direction of the house, more out of habit than out of any sense of responsibility, not really caring whether she’s heard him or not when he barrels down the driveway and comes to such a sudden stop at the end that his rear tire leaves a black trail on the concrete (something he’s been practicing all summer).

When he finds the street deserted, he looks over his shoulder at Tessa. “Didn’t your mom drop you off?”

She’s still standing next to the doorstep, her head tilted to one side and looking at him pensively. He can’t tell what she’s thinking because she’s squinting in the sunlight, but he thinks she might be a little ticked off that he didn’t even greet her properly.

Truth be told, she has every right to be mad at him. The last time they spoke was on their last day of skating camp, when he and three of his best friends from the rink had crowded around the phone in his kitchen and he’d blurted out the words _I don’t want to go out with you anymore_. The next moment, the back door had flown open and his mom had come in with two heavy bags of groceries, and he’d hung up the phone before Tessa could even react.

Initially, there had been relief. After that, the growing realization that what he had done might have been the worst mistake he’d made since that time he climbed out of his bedroom window at two in the morning and was caught on the porch by his dad before he’d even made it across the yard.

Even now – _especially_ now - he’s almost one hundred percent sure he never meant what he said to her over the phone. He should really tell her that now, but he can’t.

One, because going to see a movie at the Community Center isn’t really going to the movies at all, which he’s still pretty pissed off about, and he really doesn’t like apologizing to anyone when he’s in a bad mood. And two, if he’s honest, really honest, he kind of hates that none of his friends were allowed to go with him. His mom had made all the arrangements with Tessa’s mom before he had anything to say in the matter.

But then again, he really has no reason to complain, since complaining is pretty much all he’s done this summer.

Besides, Tessa is cool. She’s kind of quiet, maybe, and she won’t really look him in the eye, but he can make her laugh. And he loves her big laugh.

“We put my bike in the trunk,” she says in a calculated way, the way she says everything when she’s not at ease. She puts both feet on the peddles of her bike and lets the decline of the driveway take her all the way to the road. “She had to go take Casey to practice.”

“Oh,” Scott says. Another reason why he likes her: her brother plays hockey just like he does.

"Sorry you're stuck with me."

Her remark makes him wince, largely because she's hit the nail right on the head. "I don't mind." 

“Okay,” Tessa replies awkwardly, cheeks still flaming with heat.

And because Scott is Scott, even at the early age of nine-almost-ten, his first reaction is to make the awkwardness go away. His face splits into a smile and he goes for the kill, attacking her with his fingers until she breaks into a fit of laughter.

"Okay, okay, you won," she says, seeing an opportunity when he pauses and turning sharply on her bike.

_Nailed it_ , he thinks as his smile grows even wider, following her lead.   

They both take off on their bikes, Scott setting the pace initially. When he stands up on the peddles and sees Tessa suddenly flashing past him with an insane grin on her face, he feels a weird mix of surprise and admiration twisting in his gut.

Okay, so maybe this won’t be too bad after all.    

 

* * *

 

Or maybe it will be.

Despite the fans that are buzzing heavily over their heads, the Community Center is so stuffy and hot that Scott feels sweat pooling under his shirt from the moment they join the Ilderton crowd in front of the screen. After saying hi to his aunt Carol, they’re instructed to head to the tables in the back, since all the seats in the middle of the room are already taken - exactly like he'd predicted.

Things don’t get any better once the movie eventually starts. It takes him precisely three minutes to realize that _Muppets From Space_ is about as boring as their ballet lessons, causing him to spend the next ten minutes trying to figure out an escape route. He finally sees a small window of opportunity when he watches his aunt disappear into the kitchen, the fluttering of his heart equal parts nervous and excited.

“Tess. _Tess._ Come on, let’s go.” He nudges her arm and slips off the table, expecting her to follow him. When she doesn’t, he turns his head and gestures frantically at her. “Come _on_ , what are you doing?”

“Huh?” Tessa whispers distractedly. One eye is still on the screen, her hands jammed between the table and her legs, but she finally snaps out of it when she notices the bordering-on-frantic look on his face. “What are _you_ doing?”

“Getting _out_ of here.” He gestures again, fighting the urge to roll his eyes when she screws up her face and tilts her head.

That head tilt is a no. Of course she doesn’t want to leave.

Well, with or without Tess, he’s not spending another minute in this sauna of a room. He lets a low hissing sound escape from between his teeth before he sneaks down the wall and into the hallway, where even more heat is accumulating in the absence of the ceiling fans. Ten seconds later, he’s standing next to his bike again.

He doesn’t know exactly where he’s going, only that he’s going anywhere that isn’t the parking lot of the Community Center. When there’s a sudden rumbling sound above him, he squints up at the thick, dark clouds that have covered the sky since they left his house, realizing for the first time that the heat and the humidity in the air is a sign of a thunderstorm about to break loose.

He looks around the parking lot, trying to decide his direction, when the distinct sound of Tessa’s bike bell sounds behind him.

He swings around and finds her sitting on her bike with her shoulders squared and her feet planted firmly on the ground.

“Well, where are we going?”

His face cracks into a grin, one so wide his cheeks hurt. “You’ll see,” he says, because suddenly he knows exactly where he’s going.

They take off in the direction of Scott’s house, making sure to stay hunched on their bikes so his mom doesn’t spot them when she looks out the kitchen window. Once they’ve passed his driveway, he stands up on the peddles and speeds up, taking a sharp right turn into the dusty trail that leads to his grandpa’s house. GMac lives on the outskirts of town, but since Ilderton is only as big as a cow's fart can reach (GMac's favorite saying), they pull into his driveway barely ten minutes later.

“Is your grandpa home?” Tessa asks as they drop their bikes on the ground. The courtyard is deserted, and if it wasn’t for the sound of plows in the near distance, there would be something almost creepy about the silence around them.

“Guess he’s not,” Scott says with disappointment in his voice. He looks around, spotting his grandpa’s new pick-up truck near the silos in the back, and strolls up to the living room window to check if he can see anyone inside.

The blinds in the back are pulled down to shield the house from the sun; the rest of the room seems empty.

“No one,” he says to Tessa when he returns. He kicks the gravel beneath his feet when a thick drop of rain lands on his nose, almost at the exact same time another one splashes Tessa in the face.

“Maybe we should go back to your house.” There’s a hint of nervousness in her voice as she looks up at the sky, which looks like it’s seconds away from bursting open. “Scott?”

“No, not yet.” He turns and starts walking toward his grandpa’s truck, determined to stay out here at least for as long as the movie is still on in the Community Center. He doesn’t want to waste his last days of summer break, and while it’s a real bummer that his grandpa isn’t home, going back home isn’t nearly as exciting as having a little adventure out here.

This time, he doesn’t really expect Tessa to follow him, so it’s a pleasant surprise when he stops next to the car and she’s right behind him. The rain is starting to come down harder and the frown on her face is growing equally as fast, so he yanks on the handle and triumphantly opens the car door.

“Tadaaa!” he cries, proudly spreading his arms wide.

“What?” Tessa says, anything but impressed that his grand plan turned out to be opening his grandpa’s car. “Can we just please go back now? It’s going to start raining really badly in a minute and my mom-”

“Tess, it’s a _car_ ,” he talks over her. He hops onto the driver’s seat and leans over to open the other door for her. “It’s completely safe in here during a storm,” he explains when she hesitantly walks around the car and gets in next to him. “You see, it’s a kind of safe box, and the rubber tires will send the electricity straight into the ground in case we’re hit by lightning.”

She stares at him as if he’s gone completely mad. “We won’t be hit by lightning in your kitchen, either.”

“No, but we might if we ride our bikes back now.” He flashes her a grin and twists in his seat to inspect the back seat. When his eyes detect the six pack of beers on the bottom of the car, they go wide in excitement.

“Jackpot,” he says, pulling out a bottle.

Tessa’s eyes just about bulge out of their sockets as she swallows and takes a double-take. “What are you going to do with that?”

“What do you think I am?” He reaches for the glove compartment but is momentarily startled when a clap of thunder makes Tessa jump in her seat.

“I’d close that door if I were you,” he says. He turns his head to look at her, realizing they haven’t even been this close on the ice before. In fact, he’s never been this close to a girl before, and the fact that it’s Tess makes him suddenly very self-conscious of the faint smell of sweat that has soaked into his Leafs jersey over the summer. He instantly regrets every time he refused when his mom offered to wash it for a good few seconds, until he realizes… it’s _just_ Tess.

Tessa, who hasn’t taken a breath since he turned his head to look at her.   

She nods and pulls away from him, quickly shutting the car door and staying back to let him rummage through the glove compartment until he finds the pen with the bottle opener at the end he’d been looking for. Rain is battering down on the roof of the car and their view through the windshield has reduced to shapes and blobs of color, and if he didn’t feel slightly unnerved by the thought that they have no idea how long they’ll be trapped in his grandpa’s truck, he would’ve loved everything about it.

He loves thunderstorms. He also knows Tessa doesn’t, and he isn’t doing a very good job at distracting her.            

He flicks the cap off the beer bottle like his grandpa has made him do a thousand times before and holds the bottle to his lips, suddenly nervous. The smell wafting from the bottle almost makes him gag, but spurred on by the marvel in Tessa’s eyes, he takes a swig anyway.

_YUCK._

A shiver runs through him and he violently shakes his head, pressing his hand to his mouth.

_Fucking hell, why would anyone drink this stuff??_  

“Well, that was,” he starts, but he swallows his words when his gaze finds Tessa’s. He hands her the bottle instead. “Here, taste it.”

She swallows audibly, her vision narrowing to the bottle in front of her.

“No one will know,” he says. “I promise I won’t tell.”

“It smells bad.”

_And it tastes horrible,_ he thinks, but he takes another sip anyway to encourage her. And hates it even more than the first sip.

He presses his hand to his mouth again, this time not even trying to cover up the sound of disgust coming from his mouth. By the time he blinks through the stinging of his eyes, the bottle has been taken from his fingers and Tessa is tilting back her head with her nose scrunched up, taking a swig three times as big as the one he dared to take.

Her face goes from reluctant to full-on disgusted and absolutely horrified as she turns to glare at him, struggling to swallow. “That’s _horrible_ ,” she says when she wipes her mouth on the collar of her shirt, glancing at the bottle and pushing it back in his hand like it’s poison in liquid form.

He hesitates for a second before he caves. “Okay, yeah, that’s absolutely disgusting.” He feverishly starts rolling down the window just enough to chuck the bottle out of the car, because the smell is making him want to gag. “I’m going to like it when I’m older, though,” he says when the window is closed again, sounding more confident than he’s actually feeling. “I’m already learning to drink coffee. Charlie and Danny drink that stuff too.”

“Well, I’m not,” Tessa says, crossing her arms over chest.

“You’re not going to drink coffee either?”

“I don’t know. Maybe when I’m married.”

“Why only when you’re married?”

“Because it’s something married people do. My parents drink coffee, and my grandparents drink coffee, and my teacher who recently got married drinks coffee. It’s basic math, you see.”

Scott considers that theory. “Yeah, my parents do as well.” Maybe it _is_ something married people do. “Do you know _who_ you’re going to marry?”

He realizes his question sounds like a second-grader’s question the moment he asks it, but Tessa just breathes in deeply like she’d been waiting for someone to ask her.

“There are three boys in my class I like, so maybe them.”

“Aha,” he says, not sure what he was expecting and not sure where this is going, either, _if_ it is going anywhere at all.

He starts tapping his foot and looking around the car. Now that they’ve both tasted the beer and chucked it out the window twice as fast, their little adventure is turning out to be not quite as exciting as he’d hoped it would be.

“What about you?”

“What about me?” he asks, looking past her and considering his options for a moment before he climbs into the backseat and starts digging through his grandpa’s tools and junk that’s spread out on the floor.

Tessa puts her elbows on the headrests and leans between the two seats in the front. “Who are you going to marry?”

He laughs a dry laugh, pausing with a battered penny in his hand he’s pulled out from underneath the passenger’s seat. “I don’t know. I’ll figure that out later, I guess. I'm only ten.”

What he doesn’t tell her is that he’s thought about this, and that he’s had a Plan A for about a year now, though he’s not sure he can still call it his Plan A after that phone call on the last day of skating camp. Maybe it’s more appropriate to call it “Plan Z” now, since he’s pretty sure she’s never going to forgive him for ending the call as abruptly as he did.

He nervously rubs the penny between his fingers, his eyes darting from the dirty copper to Tessa and back. “I’m really sorry for what I said to you over the phone. You know, after skating camp. I mean, I didn’t really mean what I… well, I just… my friends, they…” He sighs and gives up, deciding that silence is better than whatever word vomit is coming out of his mouth. “I’m really sorry.”

She screws up her face like maybe she’s considering forgiving him, and then takes him completely by surprise by waltzing over his apology like she never heard a word he said.

“How are you going to figure out who you’re going to marry?”

Realizing that is a question far too big for an eight and an almost-ten-year-old to answer but not knowing how to put that feeling into words, Scott goes silent and just stares at her. And then says the first thing he can think of.

“Uh – kiss her?”

Tessa snorts, pulling up one knee and leaning it on the cupholder between the two front seats. “You’re just going to walk up to a girl and kiss her?”

“I guess? How would you do it, then?”

“Easy. I’ve made a list for each boy, and the one with the highest score is the one I’ll marry.”

“Really? And how does that work? You're just going to keep adding points until you're ready to marry someone?”

“Until I’m twenty-five _at least_ ,” she says like she’s a proper adult in an eight-year-old’s body, finally climbing over the seats and sitting down cross-legged next to him. “And you’re not doing very well.”

It takes him three whole seconds to figure out exactly what she means by that. “You mean I am on your list?”

“Yeah, of course you are.” Her voice and her confidence suddenly grow smaller again, until she’s just the eight-year-old, shy girl with the big pink mittens who prefers talking to all the grown-ups at the rink over playing with him and his friends. “You can kiss me.”

The words come out so quietly he's not even sure he's heard them right. “Huh?”

“So you know if you’d want to marry me.”

Stupidly enough, that logic makes perfect sense to him, but his mind is reeling. For all his confidence and his attempts to get the attention from the other girls at the rink, he’s only ever kissed Tessa on the cheek at the Ilderton Fair. He’s not even sure if he already wants to kiss a girl, since Charlie didn’t either until he was thirteen.

On the other hand, his Plan Z might just become Plan A again if he does.

_But it will be absolutely disgusting. Kissing is disgusting. Why would you want to_ kiss _a girl?_

He pulls his nose and shifts nervously in his seat. “Okay, close your eyes.”

She closes her eyes. Her fingers haven’t stopped playing with the little silver band on her middle finger, but her face is calm, and Scott breathes in.

He smells rain. He smells beer. And then he smells Tessa, vanilla and strawberry and something distinct he hadn’t realized he’s come to associate with summer.

“Keep still,” he murmurs when he’s only inches away from her nose. Her breath is tickling his face, and right when he puts his mouth against hers, she opens her eyes.

He panics. The kiss isn’t wet but not exactly dry either, and Tessa’s lips are soft as silk, but his body freezes in response to all the unknown stimuli hitting him all at once. What he realizes a moment too late is that one of those stimuli is the voice of his grandpa penetrating his conscience, and the chill behind him when two strong arms abruptly pull him away from Tessa and out of the truck.

“It’s always you two, isn’t it?” GMac mutters in his ears, an undeniable chuckle in his voice. Then, a little louder, he calls over his head, “Found 'em, Charlie, they were in the truck!”

 

* * *

 

He’s grounded. Which absolutely sucks when you only have about a week left of summer break, one he will get to spend thinking about the mistakes he made – the first one being the fact that he sneaked out of the Community Center, and the second one, the beer.

There really was no denying once GMac noticed his breath and the missing bottle. Much to Scott’s surprise, however, he didn’t mention anything about the kiss he probably-most-likely also witnessed to his parents, which was one relief.

That doesn’t take away from the fact that he’s not allowed to go anywhere with his friends until school starts, though, and the immense sense of guilt for getting Tessa into trouble as well.

It’s the latter that keeps him from picking up the phone later that night, when he’s had a lecture from both of his parents about responsibility and alcohol. He stares at the landline like it’s going to burn his hand when he picks it up, knowing he has to tell her but trying to postpone the moment as long as possible.

He watches another minute tick by on the clock above the door before giving in and punching her number on the landline.

“Hi, this is Tessa speaking?” she says when she picks up, her voice sounding even smaller over the phone than it does in real life.

His stomach makes a backflip. “Tessa?”

“Scott?”

“Oh. Hi.”

This is the part where he’s supposed to say All The Stuff, but he has nothing. His mind has emptied and left him with a vocabulary consisting of “oh” and “hi”.

She pauses, letting the awkwardness grow even stronger. “Scott, why are you calling?”

“Well…” He winds the cord of the phone around his finger like he’s watched Danny do when he’s on the phone with his friends and reluctantly lulls his head back, thinking about hanging up already until he sees his mom standing in the doorway with a look on her face that means business.

He quickly pulls the phone closer to his mouth, the words suddenly rushing out of him. “My mom wanted me to call you and say that I’m sorry.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.”

“So… I’m sorry.” He turns around with the phone pressed to his cheek and pointedly raises both of his brows at his mom, as if to say, _Happy now?_

She certainly doesn’t look very happy, but she turns around and leaves the kitchen, so he must’ve said something right.

“My mom wasn’t very mad,” Tessa says. “I told her I only had one sip of the beer, so I only have to load the dishwasher for a week.”

_Shit,_ he thinks, which he knows he’s not supposed to think, but Charlie and Danny walk around the house cursing like two truck drivers and he’s making sure to keep up. “I really am sorry, Tess.”

“I know, but it’s fine. Was your mom really mad?”

“ _Hah._ ” He shakes his head, tucking the phone between his shoulder and his ear and leaning against the fridge. “She was absolutely fuming. She still is, but I’ll be fine. I’m grounded for three weeks and I can’t play any video games, though, which really sucks.” He looks down at his kicks, which have left dirty footprints on the kitchen floor.

Shit. He has to remember to clean that up later.

Tessa is staying silent on the other end, but he doesn’t really mind, because it gives him the chance to gather enough courage to get the next words out.

“Am I still on your list, though?” He quickly whips his head around and skims the kitchen, making sure neither Danny nor Charlie are anywhere near to eavesdrop on the conversation. But it’s just him, and for a moment he thinks it’s _really_ just him, because Tessa is staying so silent he thinks she might've left.

“Tessa?”

“Yes, you’re still on my list.”

_Oh, thank god_. He grins at his blurry silhouette in the fridge.

“But I won’t let you kiss me, though,” she adds after a beat of silence. “Kissing is gross. I don’t know why people do it.”

“Oh, yeah, me neither.” He’s quick to agree with her now, because even though he doesn’t think the kiss was _that_ gross in hindsight – he really liked seeing all the freckles on her nose – it’s a relief just to know she still wants to marry him. He doesn’t have a Plan B or a Plan Z, for that matter, and if Tessa Virtue doesn’t marry him, he doesn’t know who else he’s supposed to marry.

To be quite honest, he doesn’t know if he _wants_ to marry any other girl. The girls in his class are fun, and they’re really awesome to play tag with because he always wins, but they don’t laugh at his jokes the way Tessa does.

“And I’m not drinking beer again,” he says. “That was gross, too.”

She chuckles. “If you ever want to try it again, I’ll remind you of how gross it really was.”

“And I’ll remind you of the kiss,” he says.

“Okay.”

“Okay,” he echoes, his grin even wider now.

_Yes,_ he thinks, feeling pretty darn satisfied with himself. _I can still marry Tessa. Even if she won’t let me drink beer, she’s probably the only girl I can marry without having to kiss her._

“I have to go now,” Tessa says. “I should be in bed already.”

“Is your bedtime seven o’clock?” he asks quickly, because he suddenly doesn’t want her to go yet. If he hangs up the phone now, he’ll probably have to go to bed too.

“Yes?” she says softly, but it sounds more like a question. “What’s your bedtime?”

“Oh, whenever I want, really.” He puffs out his chest and pushes himself off of the fridge, wrapping his finger around the cord again. “I don’t really have a bedtime, you see. Because I’m almost ten, and all that.”

“Oh,” she says again, sounding a little deflated this time.

Instant regret kicks in. “I still had a bedtime when I was eight, though,” he says quickly. “So you really shouldn’t feel bad.”

There’s a two-second pause, and then Tessa’s voice, nearly a whisper: “Thanks, I guess.”

“You’re welcome.”

He really shouldn’t have said _you’re welcome._ That really sounded really freaking stupid.

“I’ll see you at the church before practice,” he says, because he doesn’t know what else to say, and his cheeks are on fire, which he doesn’t like.

“Okay,” she says. “Bye.”

“Bye.”

He can already hear the dial tone before he’s even pulled the phone away from his ear.


	6. Till the road runs out (part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A road trip through Canada and 12 hours that are only theirs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this chapter is 100 % inspired by Dermot Kennedy's "Swim Good". (If you haven't listened to his songs yet, please, close this tab and go listen. Please. If only it's for the greater good of noticing when his lyrics will inevitably sneak their way into my writing. *smirks*)

_Mississauga, Ontario_

_April 2017_

Almost everyone told him not to drive all the way back to Montreal after the funeral.

Charlie did. Danny did. Both of his parents did.

And, let’s be real, for obvious reasons. Reasons that manifested in bloodshot eyes and a severely limited amount of patience on Scott’s part.

Things took a turn for the worse when the rest of the Moirs also got word of his admittedly foolish and maybe slightly irresponsible plan to take on the seven-hour road trip from his parents’ house in Ilderton to Montreal, and the pressure of their combined protests drove him to do the one thing he never did when it came to family: lie.

_Fine, I’ll drive the truck to airport and Danny can pick it up tomorrow morning. Yes, mom, I promise._

He knew he wasn’t going to keep his word before the words had even left his mouth, and he was pretty sure his mom knew, too. And he didn’t keep his word; he’s a few hours into the road trip he promised everyone and their dog not to make, and the only person who didn’t tell him not to drive all the way back in the truck is munching on a bag of veggie chips next to him, one of her feet propped up on the dashboard.

“Don’t pretend like you would be able to make those last few bites look pretty, Moir,” she says without looking up from the corner of the bag she’s trying to clean out, her forehead creased with concentration.

_Totally busted._

Despite himself, one corner of his mouth quirks up in a grin. This is exactly the reason why he allowed her to come on this trip with him; she hasn’t mentioned the funeral, nor the foolishness of his actions afterward, and though he knows they will eventually have to face the conversation that includes all of those things, he enjoys the fact that vegetable chips and the astronomical differences in their taste of music have been the biggest of his concerns for the past twenty miles.

“I never claimed anything of the sort,” he says, holding up the palm of his hand in the air between them. He can’t help but be momentarily distracted when she leans over to look for a napkin in her purse, but it’s nothing to do with her. It’s the purse.

They changed, afterward. He still doesn’t know if he did it because of his mom or because he was supposed to make everyone believe he was getting on a plane. If it’d been up to him, he only would’ve swapped his suit for his training gear tomorrow morning.

Tessa changed, too. The one thing she didn’t change, and the one thing that doesn’t match with the pair of salmon-colored Adidas sweats she’s currently wearing, is the black purse.

“Scott.”

“What?” He blinks at her and lets his eyes wander back to the road, knowing he’s busted – again.

She doesn’t answer. Instead, she stares at him in that open, unashamed way that’s heavy with the weight of expectation, though he’s not quite sure what she’s expecting of him.                 

Or maybe, subconsciously, he does know, because his answer comes easily – too easily – when she speaks.

“Hey, there’s an exit coming up in two kilometers, maybe we should-”

“I’m not stopping for anything other than gas stations and urgent pee breaks, Tess, so if this is a blather situation, I suggest you hold it until we get to one.”

Silence. The air presses heavily onto his shoulders, pushing him into his seat and making it impossible to move. He doesn’t need to see her face to know that they’ve officially crossed the safe border of discussions about protein powders and Canadian rock bands from the 80s and landed themselves straight in the shit show that is his current emotional state.

That went fucking smoothly, didn’t it?

He clenches his jaw, checking his mirrors and letting his gaze linger on the rearview mirror when he notices the white Nissan Sentra that’s been tailgating him since before they passed through Milton is still so far up his ass his headlights are positively blinding him.

“Fucking asshole,” he mutters under his breath, considering slamming his foot on the brake just to screw him over. The only thing keeping him from actually going through with that no-good plan is the sight of his skating partner in the passenger’s seat of his late grandpa’s truck, a sight that distracts him long enough to get a grip on himself again.

It’s been eighteen years since he was last in this car with her. Quite frankly, it’s a miracle the truck even still exists, because it would’ve been totaled after the funeral if it wasn’t for his efforts to fix it up just enough to survive one final road trip through Canada. It had been a tedious job, but it had kept him from having to deal with the funeral arrangements he knew his family was way better at sorting out than he was anyway.

No one had driven the truck in a few years, and until tonight, he’d always assumed he was going to be making this final trip on his own.

He’d wanted to drop her off at the airport. Their flight back to Montreal was booked; she would’ve been in her own bed by now, getting the night’s rest they both desperately need for tomorrow’s practice.

He should’ve insisted harder when she refused to get out of the truck, he realizes now.

His hands wrap around the steering wheel and squeeze it tightly. Out of the corner of his eye, he can tell Tessa’s foot that has been propped up on the dashboard has stopped tapping in tune to the soft country tunes coming from the radio. Most of the drive so far was spent in silence, but she turned on KX 94.7 twenty miles back – a cold-blooded strategic move even he couldn’t resist.

A road trip across Canada and Johnny Cash blaring from the speakers. GMac would’ve loved it.

He looks away from her when her eyes flick sideways to meet his. He hasn’t asked her if she remembers that this is the truck where they hid from a thunderstorm that time when they were kids, but he likes not knowing. It gives him something to look forward to, though he’s not quite sure what.

“You can get some sleep, if you want,” he says, flicking his eyes from the road to the dashboard to fiddle with the heat since he knows she tends to wait until she’s freezing before turning it on herself. “Six hours until we’re home. You can rest assured I’m not blacking out tonight.”

Tessa stays purposefully silent next to him, making his gut wrench uncomfortably. When he eventually cocks his head to the side, the look in her eyes is the one he’s seen in every single one of his family members’ eyes today.

“You promised me you would take a break,” she says, softly but firmly. “It was the only thing I made you promise.”

He swallows hard. “And I did, half an hour ago.”

“We bought ice cream at a gas station.”

“We stood on that parking lot for at least twenty minutes, T.”

One unsurprisingly skeptical brow shoots up her forehead. “You devoured that ice cream and sped out of the parking lot after five.”

He lets a long sigh be his reply, primarily because he can’t exactly object to what she’s saying. What he hasn’t told her is that the only reason he scarfed down that ice cream is because he could only stomach it if he didn’t think about swallowing too much.

“It’s past midnight,” Tessa presses on, pulling her leg back down from the dashboard. “There’s an exit-”

“ _Tessa_.” He doesn’t look at her then, because he doesn’t need any more of the sadness or the compassion or whatever the fuck else he’ll find on her face. He’s got enough of it bubbling up in his throat already.

With all ten of his fingers wrapped tightly around the steering wheel, he slowly reduces their speed to a snail’s pace until the Nissan has finally had enough.

“Fucking finally!” he shouts in the direction of the other driver when he passes them, only to be met with Tessa’s non-impressed stare when his gaze lands back on her. “What? _He_ was the one digging so far up my ass he could’ve killed us all.”

She rolls her eyes at him, slipping her phone from her pocket and unlocking it. As if on cue, Scott’s phone starts zooming in the cupholder between them, making her eyes flick upward to read the name of the caller on the screen.

He’s already read it by the time her gaze darts to him.

“My mom wouldn’t call at this hour if she thought I got on the plane.”

He doesn’t realize it’s an accusation until he speaks the words out loud. The air feels instantly stiffer, or maybe that’s just Tessa, who straightens up like someone just shoved an ironing board up the back of her hoodie.

The phone keeps buzzing in the cupholder. The longer it goes on, the more Scott feels the urge to hurl it through the window – and himself as well, while he’s at it.

When silence finally returns, Tessa’s confession comes with it, less sheepish than he maybe would’ve expected.

“She would’ve wanted to know, Scott. She’s your mother.”

“Yeah, and out of the two of us, who knows her best, you think?” He’s not really thinking when he snatches his phone from the cupholder and tosses it into the backseat. “Now she’s going to be up all night, worried sick I’m doing the one thing everyone told me not to do. Job well done, Tessa.”

“Wouldn’t you want to know? If it were Danny, or Charlie, wouldn’t you want to know?”

“No, because their business is _their_ business and this is _mine_.”

He’s crossing the line. He knows he’s crossing the line, the unspoken one between them they’ve never broken, not even when she was going through all the surgery shit years ago. They’ve never yelled at each other, and though he’s only barely raised his voice, it feels strange to realize that it might not be impossible to yell at her after all, something he’d convinced himself of at some point in time.

“I’ll send her a text,” Tessa says, the decisive tone of her voice leaving no room for discussion. “Just to let her know we’re okay. And we’re taking the next exit.”

He looks at her over one foot of distance, three tons of suppressed emotions and the nineteen years of history between them that tell him exactly how this is going to end.

He’s not going to win this one. Or any other one, for that matter. But that’s never stopped him from trying.

“Tessa.”

“Scott.”

“I’m not stopping.”

“You are. I need to pee.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I have a very small blather.”

“I know for a fact that you don’t.”

“And you’ve come to that conclusion because our telepathic senses allow you to feel the current status of my blather?”

He grits his teeth at the road in front of him, watching the exit sign pass by the window and making the decision so last-minute his tug at the steering wheel would’ve sent his mom reeling. “Fine, we’re taking the next exit.”

 

* * *

 

They pass four hotels and two restaurants before Scott parks the truck in the middle of a parking lot, the only other cars belonging to people spilling into the night club that’s tucked away between a grocery store and a hairdresser in the other corner.

Tessa, having propped her legs back up on the dashboard, slowly lets them drop to the floor again. “Erm – does this scream ‘nice and clean bathroom waiting for you inside’ to you?” She squints at the front of the night club, wondering if she should start regretting her persistence that landed them here in the first place.

“No, but a bathroom isn’t really what you’re looking for, it is?”

Something tight wraps itself around her throat when her gaze darts to Scott. The feeling is not quite unfamiliar, something between a distant memory and déjà-vu, and until now she hadn’t been able to figure out what’s so unsettling about it.

When her eyes lock on Scott’s, the reason is staring her right in the face. One blink and she’s back in a London ice rink with burning legs and nerves she hasn’t felt since their first competition together, having wasted every second of the fifteen-minute car ride she’d intended to spend rehearsing her speech and coming up with nothing when she sees him for the first time in weeks. But it’s not the having nothing part that freaked her out then, and what’s freaking her out now.

It’s the fact that _he_ has nothing either.

There’s no anger. No sadness. No frustration. The only other time that happened was in that London ice rink, when they met each other halfway between the rink and the changing rooms and suddenly forgot how to navigate being friends.

 _But this isn’t 2008,_ she reminds herself. No matter how much the look in his eyes reminds her of that December day nine years ago, she can’t forget that things are different now. They’re not the same people they were back then.  And they haven’t gone through a shit ton of therapy to end up back in that spot, either.

“Alright, maybe we should just take a little b-” she starts, but halfway through that sentence, Scott abruptly stops rubbing his eyebrows and his emotions burst to the surface like someone flipped a switch.

“I _can’t_ , Tessa. I can’t take a break, can’t you fucking _see_ that?” He slams the steering wheel with the palm of his hand, facing away from her before she can see his face properly.

She’s seen him like this in rinks all over the world, taking his anger out on the boards when their imperfections caught up with them on the ice and led them to make mistakes. She’s learned not to take his frustration personal, but that doesn’t mean his struggles don’t affect her.

“Scott, I…”

“First Kiki, now GMac. And then there’s the skating and the Olympics, and our family members who think we’re the most stupid people on earth for wanting to try this again, which isn’t exactly the greatest source of encouragement at 27 and 29, and the fact that there’s just no break until this entire fucking thing is over. There’s no break. And you want to know something?”

Her heart pounds painfully in her chest, but she knows he has to get this out, no matter how badly she wants to keep him from saying anything else. “What?”

“GMac was the only one who smiled when I first told him we were going for another run. He said we were good for each other, you and me, and that this would be a good thing. Out of my entire family, he was the _only_ one who didn’t question our decision.”

This isn’t nothing. This is everything. His emotions are raw and on the surface, and the right words are sitting right on the tip of her tongue: _you know we have our families’ support, no matter what. And you know I’ll always have your back, no matter what._

But this isn’t about skating or the Olympics, or even the death of his grandpa: this is everything catching up with him all at once. 

They look at each other for a few more seconds before Scott finally huffs and throws his door open. She half expects him to storm out of the parking lot and into the club in the corner, but he doesn’t; he only turns his back to her, lowering his head and propping one arm up on the open car window.

“Why did you come on this trip, Tess? You didn’t have to, so why did you?”

She unbuckles and winces, the sound as sharp as the lashing of a whip. _Dramatic much, T._

“Because I care,” she says, which is the truth. “And because you don’t.”

The muscles in his back tense, just like his jaw when he turns his head. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

_Exactly what you think it means._

“Just spit it out already, T. I’m not in the mood for games tonight.”

“I just think you care so much about others that you forget to care about yourself sometimes.”

The words come easily once she allows herself to say them out loud. She doesn’t regret them, but she regrets the look on his face.

His eyebrows lower over his eyes until she can no longer tell if he’s angry at her or just at the situation. “That’s not just me. That’s on both of us.”

With that, he slams the car door shut. She watches his figure marching over the parking lot, recoiling when he reaches the entrance of the club and taking a sharp left turn to enter the supermarket instead.

She doesn’t catch up with him until she rounds the corner of the ice cream aisle, where he’s too busy pretending to debate ice cream flavors with himself to look up at her.

“I came because I know you never would’ve asked me to.”

The pale lighting does nothing to hide the bags under his eyes and the exhaustion on his face when he gives her a look. It’s more of a glare, one she decides to ignore as he gives up on the ice cream and heads straight for the fresh produce instead.

“Well, thanks, T. Much appreciated.”

He couldn’t’ve sounded any more sarcastic if he’d tried. She takes the banana – one single banana, something only a psychopath would do – he's holding up vaguely in her direction and drops it in the nearest basket, handing him the basket again so he can continue pulling products off of shelves.

It isn’t until he adds a can of green olives and canned soup to his already mismatched shopping basket that she gets worried.

“I thought you hated green olives.”

“Can’t stand ‘em,” he replies flatly. “Do you need green beans? I noticed they were on your meal plan for this week.”

“Uh – sure,” she says, picturing the shelf in her fridge that already has a perfectly measured portion of green beans on it and wondering when and if she should perform an intervention.

They round another corner, the aisle in front of them laden with wine bottles. Scott pauses. Two girls at the other end of the aisle giggle over some pear-shaped bottle of liqueur, pulling in their broad-shouldered friend who locks eyes with Tessa over the cap of the vodka bottle he’s subjecting to a closer inspection.

Realizing the attention of his inspection has turned to her, Tessa looks away, claws of discomfort already digging into her stomach.   

“Hello, gorgeous,” he says loudly, either too cocky or too intoxicated to register the fact that this could be an inappropriate comment to make at this hour in some random grocery store, when the receiver of the comment clearly isn’t in the mood for whatever antics he has in mind.

She tries to pretend the guy doesn’t exist, hoping he’ll just get bored and move on if she doesn’t show any interest. Those hopes get crushed before she can even count to two in her head.

“Hey, I was talking to you over there.”

Tessa winces, debating with herself whether it would be smart to just sprint out of this aisle and into the next tone. This isn’t even flirting; this is straight-up harassment, though the guy will never realize that because he’s never been taught to read a girl’s body language correctly – or any sort of decency, for that matter.

The only guy who’s reading all the signs right is Scott, who has looked up from one of the lower shelves and has squared his shoulders.

“Don’t pull a face like that. I said you’re gorgeous. Isn’t a guy allowed to give a girl a compliment anymore these days?”

The tone of the guy’s voice has turned dark in the absence of a response from Tessa. She can tell he’s starting to feel on edge, even as her eyes flit over the endless rows of wine bottles and despite the girls’ attempts to get him to leave. And just as she wants to look up and give him what he wants (or at least part of it), his fingers slide through hers, the subtlest of gestures to tell her he's right there if she needs him.

A squeeze of his hand. Her stomach unclenches, her lungs letting out the breath she’s been holding.

“Time to get moving, man,” Scott says. “I hear happy hour is almost over.”

Staring down at their loosely intertwined fingers, the guy seems suddenly put off from making another move at Tessa, rolling his eyes and puffing out his chest.

 _Literally_ puffing out his chest. Not in a this-sounds-nice-for-a-novel or this-seems-cool-for-a-movie kind of way. Since when do guys actually do that in real life?

“Whatever, man. You got yourself a damn cold one.”

“Thanks, I even get paid for it,” Tessa replies, knowing her bitch face is working when the guy blinks and stares at her, dumbfounded. He puffs one last time, turning his attention back to the girls, who have collected a nice array of liquor in the meantime, and swaggers into the next isle with his arms wrapped around both of their shoulders.

“Classic example of an arrogant douche,” Tessa grits through her teeth when they’re alone again. “What a waste of such great hair.”

Despite everything, Scott snorts. “What, for real?”

“Of course. He has The Flow.”

“The _flow_?”

“The Flow, capital F. Not too long, not too short. Just right.” She can’t help herself: her eyes flick up to his hair, which in this current moment (and has been for a delicious number of months now) the embodiment of what she’s just described as _The Flow_.

Ah, shit. He follows her gaze, knows what it means (because of course he would know), and promptly does that awkward smile thing that reduces the oxygen in the air to a bare minimum.

And then there’s the other thing. The fact that his fingers haven’t let go of hers, her fingers haven’t let go of his, and it’s starting to turn into a really awkward sweat feast down there.   

See, this is the advantage of working in an environment that is either too cold to go about without wearing _at least_ a thing glove or too tense to attribute any potential sweat production to anything other than nerves and adrenaline: things don’t get awkward on the ice. They _do_ , however, in a grocery store in Mississauga, on a road trip she really shouldn’t have joined and in an aisle that’s at least four aisles away from the checkout.

On a scale of one to getting herself into the danger zone, she’s well past ignoring every single yellow sign telling her to KEEP THE FUCK OUT.  

“So, green olives, huh.” She looks down at the basket, noticing a family packet of tissues she hadn’t seen him drop on top of everything else when they passed the hygiene aisle earlier. She also notices the buzzing of the fluorescent lamp over their heads, all of which is meaningless in the grand scheme of things but tickles her superstitious senses nonetheless.  

“Tess.”

“Is this your plan to bribe me into joining you for another road trip in the future? Or are you going to tell me why we’re buying a basket full of items neither of us really needs?”

If the air had a color, it would be the color of his eyes; more brown than green, and without any kind of spark she might’ve conjured by that hair comment a moment ago. He sets his jaw so tightly she thinks it might break, but _still_ , because they’re both idiots and because they have a shitload of unresolved issues to work through, he’s not. Letting. Go. Of. Her. Hand.

She wants to slide her fingers from his and wipe them on her hoodie. She also wants to take them and comb them through his hair, from the top to the base. She does neither.    

“Do you need me to drive you to the airport? Or do you want to keep driving? Is that what you really need, just to drive until we’re home?”

He rolls his head on his shoulders and lets his gaze linger on the nearest bottle of wine, like his only option is to drink himself into a daze and sleep until the sun comes up.

_No way, José. You did that one time. Didn’t work out well for you then either, did it?_

Sensing the despair in him, she squeezes his hand, sweat be damned. “Scott, hey. Talk to me.”

His head whips around, his eyes fixing on hers with an unsettling intensity. “You’re asking me what I need? I need this to not be real, I need GMac and Kiki to still be here, I need…”

His voice trails off and the basket lowers to the floor. With a purely exhausted sigh, he lets his forehead drop to hers (shit), and in a move that neither of them realizes will become part of the free dance that’s going to take them all the way to the 2018 Olympics, he lifts up her hands to rest them on his cheeks (double shit).

“I need you to lie to me and say that none of this is happening.”

The buzzing of the lamp goes quiet in her ears. A memory of a clear autumn night pops up in her head and unfolds itself like a butterfly, returning her to the moment they were standing between a pile of boxes and their bags in Scott’s driveway on the morning they left for Waterloo. She wasn’t supposed to hear the whispered words of his grandpa when he pulled his youngest grandson toward him but she did, as clearly as their family’s emotional goodbyes moments later: _Always take care of her, kid. You only have each other while you’re out there._

The memory blurs right after, soon mixing with purple and green and bringing her back to the present, in which they’re in some 24-hour grocery store in Mississauga and her skating partner has just asked her – with questionable sincerity – to lie about the current situation. Her thoughts are bouncing around like a ball in a pinball machine, 1) because she hasn't slept in thirty-six hours and 2) because something is slipping, something that has kept her from messing up in the past.

Except for that one time. The relief that came with it then is threatening to swallow her again now, only this time she knows the timing isn’t right.

But just like last time, her mouth doesn’t give a flying fuck about what’s going on in her head.

“For all anyone knows, we’ve just gotten off a plane in Montreal. None of these next hours are happening, Scott. All we’ve been given is borrowed time.”

_And that, ladies and gents, is exactly how you fuck things up in three sentences or less._

The bees in her gut start popping like fire crackers, and she knows she’s powerless against the wave that ripples over her. Funnily enough, and triggering such a strong feeling of déjà-vu she stops breathing for a second, her last thought before she surrenders is the exact same one as last time.

_Fuck it._

She reaches for the back of his head and slides her fingers through his hair. No gel. Perfect length. The buzzing of the lamp grows stronger.

_Fuck it._

_Fuck him_.

Just a big, general _fuck_.

“I won’t let you kiss me, though,” she says, because in the land of fuck-ups there’s absolutely nothing worse she can say.

It’s not even a matter of trying to stop what’s happening. It’s a fertile attempt at mopping up the entire ocean that’s coming her way. 

Scott stills. Surprise? She can’t tell at first. Then, of course, the memory flashes in his eyes; thunder, a bottle of beer, a kiss. Rain. On top of a car, or battering the window of a hotel in Finland?

The lamp above them flashes and then goes out entirely.    

“I need you to lie better,” he answers, his voice hoarse, his own wave already swallowing hers.

 _Finland for sure_.

And then his lips claim hers.

But this isn’t about her. This isn’t about them. This is about trying to get Scott back in his own head, to prevent him from sinking into a hole she knows all too well. And yeah, if the only way to do that is to let him kiss her, then that’s nothing more than an unfortunate side effect of a much larger trauma he’s dealing with.

Or so she tells herself.

He untangles their fingers, pulls her closer by her hips. Breath skimming her face, lips brushing over hers, not much lighter than the first time they ever kissed; he's teasing her. Deliciously. Frustratingly. Dangerously.

His teeth bite down on her lip, and it hurts, but she doesn’t tell him. Because if she did, she might tell him everything else that’s swirling through her brain as well, and this isn’t about them.

Or so she tells herself.

When his breath is in her ear, asking her if he can take her back to his truck, she stops telling herself anything at all.          

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am posting this having exactly zero clue on how long this "part 2" is going to be. Could be one paragraph, could be 4K words. AHH! Mom, I'm scared.
> 
> On a more serious note, I loved the idea of exploring how the comeback maybe wasn't all rainbows and sparkles all the time. Not saying this happened, of course (though some journalists *AHUM* like to think fic writers believe everything they write is the One and Only Truth), but the idea popped into my head and, well, here we are. Tell me what you think, would ya? ;)


	7. Till the road runs out (part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Morning After.

_Montreal, Québec_

_April 2017_

The rain pelting the window by his ear is not what wakes him up.

It’s the scent of coffee.

The rich aroma of roasted beans strikes his conscience like a match, immediately telling him she went for a black coffee instead of the flat white she’s been obsessed with lately. His eyelids flutter and he turns his head toward the smell, but he flinches when an intense pain shoots from his neck down to his spine and kickstarts a mental rewind of everything that happened after they left the grocery store in Mississauga. Snapshots of Tess flood his mind, every frame filling him with warmth and chilling him to the bone at the same time.

This is the part he forgot about. The part where he gets to relive everything again, only with the added bonus of his conscience that keeps questioning how the fuck they let this happen again.

He’s had six years to figure out the answer to that question. He didn’t know then, and if he’d had the answer now, last night probably never would’ve happened.       

He stirs again, letting his eyes adjust to the light, though the dark and gloomy sky makes it look like it’s late afternoon instead of early morning. Rubbing the sore muscles in his neck, he reaches out to tap his phone where he chucked it onto the floor of the truck, but he stills when he catches sight of her for the first time.

She’s sitting in the driver’s seat, somehow having tucked her knees between her chest and the steering wheel and tapping her pointer finger rhythmically against the Tim’s cup she’s holding. Her head is bopping to whatever music is playing from her headphones, her gaze focused on the magazine in her lap.

She doesn’t know he’s awake yet. Her face is slightly creased in concentration, her eyes flitting over the article she’s reading and the bun on her head bouncing up and down with a slight delay that makes his heart ache.

No, scrap that. It’s not just his heart; it’s an ache he feels right down to his bones, a mix of home sickness and heartache and a longing for something he can’t have.

All of which makes a combined amount of zero sense.

Because she’s right there. She hasn’t run, despite having enough opportunities to do so. She’s still here with him. He can touch her, if he wants.

But that’s the thing, isn’t it? He couldn’t touch her now even if he’d wanted to.

_You’re royally fucked, Moir._

He slowly lowers his head back onto the seat, repressing the sob he realizes is stuck in his throat. There are too many questions, too many answers he knows he’ll never get, but his mind is clinging to the one thing he knows with absolute certainty: this time isn’t like Finland.

For one, there was no booze involved. No spiked drink, no liqueur in pear-shaped bottles. He hasn’t decided yet whether to consider that a good thing or the fact that will earn them a fast pass ticket to hell, but for now, it feels like a small victory in comparison to last time.

_A victory? Do you even hear yourself? Absolutely nothing about this is a fucking victory._

He groans out loud, something he doesn’t realize until she whips her head around and pulls out the earbuds. Their eyes lock, and the aching in his bones turns into a beautiful stab in his chest when she gives him a little smile, the gloss over her eyes acknowledging everything that happened that night in just one look.

A rapid series of sensations that reminds him a little too much of the five stages of grief waltzes over him and settles in his stomach like a pack of bricks.

“Hey.”

“Hi,” she says, her eyes a shade of green that reminds him of a sultry August day years ago. “I got you a new shirt,” she adds after a beat, grabbing a little paper bag from the passenger’s seat and dropping it next to him. “Thought you might want to change after... well, you know. I got one as well.”

He watches as she turns in her seat to show him the shirt she’s wearing: a white, vintage style Montreal T-shirt with a block of red, yellow, blue and green stripes underneath “Montreal” that screams tourist. Upon closer inspection of the little paper bag that’s sitting by his elbow, his turns out to be a blue Habs shirt that goes perfectly with hers.

Despite the weight of the world that’s pressing down on his shoulders, he can’t help but let a bubble of laughter burst from his throat. This is the most Tess thing she’s ever done, and the sudden the urge to pull her into him and wrap his arms around her and never let her go is stronger than it’s ever been.

He goes for the next best alternative, which is to snag the tag off his new shirt and take off the one he’s currently wearing. There’s a grin plastered on his face when he pops the new one over his head, one she returns before passing him the Tim’s cup that’s been sitting in the cupholder.

His fingers brush over the rings on her middle finger, because of course they do, and his heart jolts wildly in his chest.

_This is why we have an agreement about this,_ he thinks gloomily. _Because every time we allow ourselves to cross this line, we take a piece from each other we can never give back._

This night is something they can never give back. Though he’s not quite sure he’d want to give it back if he were given the choice.

Which either makes him the world’s biggest masochist or just plain miserable.

He decides to ignore all that and clamber over the seats to join her in the front, waving his new shirt as he goes. “Loving the shirt, T. I probably need some deodorant, though.” His eyes travel down when he notices his feet are planted right on the reason why her shirt got a replacement in the first place, his entire face growing hot with humility and – _god freaking damnit_ – memories of her that will haunt him for years to come.

Which is all to say he’s officially doomed now.

“I didn’t need a confirmation of my fashion sense, but thanks,” she says, a sparkle in her eyes. “And you smell fine.” She takes a sip from her own cup of coffee and points at the dashboard, which is when he forces himself to detach his mind from the _you smell fine_ comment and take a look at the heavily circled spot on the road map he recognizes as the one GMac kept under the passenger's seat.

“Holy _shit_ , Tess, did you drive all the way to Montreal overnight?” He snatches the ancient road map from the dashboard and looks out the window at the empty parking lot. When his stare returns to her, she looks back with an open gaze and three times the number of freckles on her face he was able to see last night.

“We’re not quite home yet, but yeah, pretty much. No traffic at night,” she says, as if that explains how she managed to drive all the way to Montreal while he was passed out in the backseat.

“And I take it we lost service at some point or another?” he says, gesturing with the map, at which her cheeks flash scarlet.

“Eh – more like, I’m a technologically challenged person and I couldn’t figure out how to use the GPS system.”

A pang of affection shoots through his chest. “You could’ve woken me up.”

“Scott, you sleep like a dead man. At one point I was considering checking your pulse, but then you stirred in your sleep, so I…”

She stops herself before she can finish her sentence, and for a moment, he can see the piece this night – _he_ – has taken from her burning in her eyes, where it burns another hole straight through him.

Then she blinks and it’s gone.

“I thought you hated black coffee,” he hears himself say, a wanting so strong pulsing through his veins he has to tell himself repeatedly not to bridge the ten inches between them and grab her hand. She doesn’t even so much as blink this time.  

Even the first time around, she was better at this than he was.

Instead of replying to his statement, which he guesses was never meant to get a reply anyway, she knocks back the last of her coffee and tucks the earbuds and her phone in her bag. She carefully marks the page of her magazine with the wooden stir stick of her coffee and leans over him to tuck it into the door compartment of the passenger’s side, bouncing back in her seat when she’s done.

They sit in silence for a moment, not long enough to let it grow awkward but long enough for Scott to have a perfume-induced brain freeze in his seat next to her. She must’ve stopped at a gas station at one point – _she definitely did, you idiot, no one can drive for six hours straight and not stop for gas_ – because he doesn’t recognize the smell.

He looks up again, catching her as she inhales sharply. He automatically holds his own breath, and as she releases, she surprises him with the last words he was expecting her to say.

“I would _kill_ for a hot dog right now.”

Which is the first instance he realizes they’re sitting right in the middle of an almost empty Ikea parking lot.

 

* * *

 

There’s something strangely giggle-inducing about being the first two people to enter Ikea on a Monday morning.

Tessa has to press her lips together not to smirk as they walk through the automatic doors and step onto the escalator, something she quickly comes to realize might just be an amalgamation of too little sleep and too much caffeine. All of that in combination with the fact that she’s slept with her platonic skating partner of nineteen years, of course, but who’s bothered about the details.

She really has no reason to feel giddy, because there’s nothing giggle-inducing about being the first to people to enter Ikea on a Monday morning, and very little about the current situation is remotely entertaining.

But she just can’t help it. There’s a balloon lodged in her chest, one that has inflated so significantly since he finally woke up twenty minutes ago that she thinks she might just run her fingers through his hair if she isn’t careful. Or intertwine her fingers with his and walk through the store like they’re just another couple and not two business partners who’ve launched themselves in a situation that’s bound to make this whole thing even more complicated.

Really, any of the former options would be better than what she’s doing right now: clenching her jaw to prevent herself from flashing a megawatt smile, burrowing her hand in the sleeve of her hoodie and giving him sparkly eyes through her lashes because she obviously hates herself.

_And because neither of us knows how to deal with this. Just like last time._

As she looks up at one of the dozen or so chandeliers that is hanging from the ceiling, she thinks of all the lectures they’ve gotten from their parents, teachers, multiple sets of coaches and a handful of psychologists over the years. For all the advice they were ever given, no one had ever told them how to deal with the Morning After part, which seems extremely unfair in this light.

When they reach the top of the escalator, Scott dives straight into the bathroom. He pops back out with damp hair and drops of water on the collar of his shirt, clearly having spruced himself up a little bit. Tessa wants to take a left and head for the restaurant, but his hand is in her neck before she gets the chance and he steers her straight into the showroom.

It’s the first skin-on-skin contact since shit went down and her heart quite literally leaps out of her chest. She complies because her legs are betraying her, turning into jello as he puts the slightest amount of pressure on her neck to control her movements.

“Uhm, I’m pretty sure we don’t have time for this,” she says when they zigzag through Ikea’s collection of couches, looking up to see the childlike amusement on his face.

“Oh, I’m sure we do. Fairly sure, in fact.”

She narrows her eyes at him, trusting him not to let her crash into anything. “What did you do?”

“Called Patch. Said it was alright.”

“Wait, did you really?”

“Yup. Now, I know this isn’t exactly designer furniture, but weren’t you looking for some curtains?”

He looks down at her, and the proximity of him, despite the fact that this is part of their job and should be something she’s used to by now, is all-consuming.

“I guess we’re getting curtains,” she says.

The corners of his eyes crinkle and his fingers in her neck massage the skin for a moment before he drops his hand.

They take their time finding curtains, enjoying the sudden freedom of not facing a long and intense practice session on the ice later that day and letting things settle between them as they seize the opportunity to distract themselves by discussing couches and bedding. By the time they stop in front of the wide array of curtains, they’ve established that their interior design preferences couldn’t be any more different.

“This flower pattern has your name on it, T,” Scott says as he pulls out the ugliest set of curtains Tessa has ever seen in her life.

She lets go of the white curtains she’s examining to roll her eyes at him and shove his shoulder, but he surprises her by shoving her right back. She trips and ends up stumbling backwards into the white curtains, barely able to keep herself upright.

“Oh shit, I'm sorry!” His head pops up above her and he grins, but his face grows more serious when he sees the expression on her face. “T?”

She doesn’t know how it happens. Really, she doesn’t. But the wanting becomes too much and _he’s right there,_ which can’t be said of the other Ikea customers who either haven’t reached the curtains yet or have decided to go for an afternoon visit instead.

She grabs him by his shirt and isn’t gentle when she pulls him into the curtains with her. “Do you remember what I said last night?”

“Uh – yeah?” he says dumbly, his brain visibly shortcutting at this unexpected turn of events.   

She’s pretty sure he doesn’t have a clue what she’s referring to, but it doesn’t matter. “Technically, these next thirty or so minutes aren’t happening either.”

His pupils are blown wide, his gaze already lingering on her lips in a way that hurts in the best possible way. She takes what she needs to soften the blow, jerking his face to hers and drowning out any thoughts that might involve alternations of WHAT ARE YOU DOING, because really, she has no clue what she’s doing and she doesn’t want to find out what this means, either.

The thing is, she saw this coming the moment they flipped a coin in China and agreed to do this comeback thing. This time around, unlike pretty much any other period in their partnership, there are no other people involved (at least not that she knows of); this time around, it’s just them against the rest of the world, which, in addition to the most rigid training schedule they’ve ever had, only makes the lead-up to the Games all the more intense and the need to blow off steam virtually unbearable.

Part of her almost wishes he was seeing someone, because things would be so much easier if he was. But that’s not the part that burrows her fingers in his hair and moans into his mouth when his hands grab her waist and slide under her shirt.

_You have me,_ she wants to tell him. _You have all of me, and you don’t even know it._

They hear the voices around the corner at the same time, but Scott is the first one to break away. He puts his forehead against hers to stop what has barely even started, his fingertips leaving sparks where he pulls away from her.

“Tess.”

“I know, I’m sorry. This isn’t fair.”

He doesn’t argue with her, which is enough to make her look up at him and take the smallest of steps backwards. “This isn’t fair on anyone.”

“No, it’s not.”

His fingers are yet to catch up with his words, stilling on her hips and staying there for a few more seconds before he squeezes her and lets go. “Let’s get that hotdog, eh?”

She nods, because she knows he’s not going to turn this into a thing. They both know better than to take that big of a risk with less than a year to go until the Games.

They head back to the restaurant without curtains, both absorbed by their own thoughts, but the silence between them doesn’t feel tense. She’s secretly relieved when he bumps her hip at the cash register, almost sending the hotdog flying into the cashier but nevertheless getting a smile out of her when she hisses at him to stop.

They sit down at one of the little round tables when Scott suddenly leans into her, gesturing at something with an unopened water bottle dangling between his fingers.  

“That guy was totally looking at you.”

She swallows a bite of the hotdog and looks up to see a nicely dressed guy with a toddler in tow struggling to get the soft serve ice cream machine to work. “He was not.”

“He definitely was.”

She takes another generous bite, keeping her gaze focused on the guy to verify he really wasn’t looking at her. The second he hands the ice cream cone to his daughter, his eyes flick up to meet hers, and nothing about the way he unleashes a bright smile on her is unintentional.

She smiles back at him, heat shooting up her spine in the most unpleasant way. Then, she snatches a napkin from the napkin dispenser in the middle of the table and promptly hops off the bar stool to head for the elevators, Scott following right behind her with an amused grin on his face and a bounce in his step because he was right.

“How does that keep happening?” she mutters to him as they get into the elevator after a couple who look like they spent three weeks baking in the Florida sun without sunscreen.

He shoves his hands in his pockets, one eye on the couple in the other corner as he punches the button of the ground floor. “What, how do you keep attracting handsome single dads at Ikea?”

“No, I mean…”

“To be fair, it’s hard not to be, Tess.”

"Be what?"

"Attracted to you."

She cuts her gaze to him, and he has a boyish, innocent smirk on his face, as if he’s done nothing wrong by saying what he just said. To be fair, it’s not like he's never gushed over how beautiful she is before today, but given the timing and the gaze of the other guy in the elevator, who has clearly tuned into their conversation as they slowly creep to the ground floor, she’s at a complete loss for words.

She decides to go for the tactic that usually works in these situations, which is to ignore him completely, but he clearly isn't ready to drop the subject just yet.

“Is that why you won’t have me?” he asks, leaning into her. “Because I’m too easy to get?”

The doors of the elevator open up on the first floor and the couple gets out, leaving Tessa and Scott with too much space and too little time until they’re back on the ground floor. She turns to face him, deciding at the very last minute not to ignore him this time.   

“Do you want the dramatic, heartbreaking answer or the selfish, morbid one?”

There’s something underneath the humorous tone of her voice and the quirk of his mouth, something she sees in the hardness of his eyes. They’re dancing around the subject neither of them wants to bring up, and while they’re doing it quite skillfully, she can’t help but wonder if this is all going to blow up in their faces.

“I’ve already had my share of heartbreak today,” he says eventually. “Morbid one it is.”

She can’t tell if he’s referring to his grandpa or what happened in the truck, but she doesn't want to find out. The elevator doors close and she takes a deep breath as the elevator sets into motion again.

“It’s basic math, really. Chances of dying get considerably higher when you’re willing to give your life for someone else. I’ll take all the years I can get, thank you very much.”

The moment the words are out in the open, she wants the floor of the elevator to open up and swallow her whole.

_Oh, for heaven's sake, T._

When people (who go by the name of Scott Moir) tell her she’s horrible at delivering a joke, this is exactly what they mean: the words come out flat and not even remotely jokingly, and he’s just staring at her at the end of it like he doesn’t know what to do with this information.

Luckily for her, they’ve reached the ground floor. Cool air flows in through the elevator doors, but despite the fresh air, she doesn’t feel like she’s getting any more oxygen into her lungs. Neither is Scott, who runs a hand through his hair and finally cracks part of a smile at her.

She turns and starts walking. Rain is still coming down hard, so she ducks her head and starts running to the truck, not checking to see if he’s behind her.

 

* * *

 

Two new texts from Alma light up her screen by the time Scott drops her off at her apartment. She thanks him for the ride, grateful for the excuse the rain offers as she grabs her bag and pelts out of the road before the awkwardness between them can start to fester.

She’s just reached her front door when a third text pops up, this time from Jordan. She groans at the prospect of having to explain this to her sister, so she decides to wait a few more minutes before replying to any of them.           

After dropping off her bag in her bedroom, she returns to the kitchen. She’s just downed a glass of water when the intense beep of the intercom pulls her out of a deep train of thoughts.

“Hi, this is Tessa speaking?” she says as she picks up the phone.

There’s rain on the other end of the line and the sound of a car engine in the background. Then, a crack, and his voice in her ear as if he were standing right next to her.

“What’s the heartbreaking one?”

She turns to look at the floor, sighing at the droplets of rain she left when she came inside. “Scott, time’s up. I already gave you an answer.”

“You gave me half of it. And technically, time’s not up as long as we continue the conversation via the intercom. The intercom is basically an extension of the past itself, if you really think about it.”

_He’s an idiot. He’s an idiot and I’m so incredibly screwed._

“What’s your point?”

“My point is that we have time,” he says. “What happens on the intercom, stays on the intercom.”

She can’t help but roll her eyes at that. “That line is cheesy and overused.”

“I know it’s a cliché, but there’s a reason why clichés are so effective.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because the ladies simply can’t resist them. Now c’mon, you owe me one.”

She laughs, but she doesn’t tell him it’s because the thought of having a way to communicate freely and without any boundaries is stirring something in her gut. To think of the intercom as a liminal space without consequences might be taking it one step too far, but the escape it offers is enough to persuade her.

“Fine,” she tells him, her gaze fixed on a blank point on the wall, but she can’t bring herself to say the words.

He can tell she needs something to push her over the edge. “Would it make it easier if I made a joke?” he offers, his voice nearly drowned out by the rain in the background.

She barely registers his words. Her chest is seizing up in preparation of the words, the words, oh, if only she could get them out.

She does, eventually, when her stomach has twisted itself into a giant knot.

“Out of everyone in this world, you’re the one who could hurt me the most.”

His reply doesn’t come. She stares even harder at the wall as her eyes start to sting, regret already trickling down her spine as a pause of a few seconds turns into a silence. By the time fifteen seconds have come and gone, she’s fully convinced he’s gone.

“And you can’t let me?”

Tears pool in her eyes from one moment to the next and she balls her hand into a fist, forcing her jaw to relax. “No, I can’t let you.”

“Tess.”

“Hm?”

“I would never hurt you. I could never.”

_But you already have in the past._

She crashes her fist into the wall, using every bit of willpower to keep herself from letting out the wailing noise that’s fighting to escape her throat. “I can’t let you, Scott. It’s not a risk I'm willing to take.”

This is the first time she’s told him something that comes dangerously close to the truth. The complete version, the one she doesn’t think she will ever be able to say out loud, has taken her years to come to terms with, and part of her wishes he’d figure it out by himself.

The whole truth is that she can’t afford to lose control with him. She can’t afford to lose herself in her relationship with him, because here’s too much of themselves in it, too much history, too much they can lose if this all goes sideways. There’s so much about love they’ve learned side by side over the years, but if there’s one thing she’s learned that he hasn’t, it’s the thing her mom told her after a particularly bad breakup in the past, words she remembers to this day:  _You can invest yourself in your relationship, you can be vulnerable, but losing yourself completely in someone else is never worth it._

It’s the self-preservation he lacks and she doesn’t.

It’s basic math, part of a list in a second-grade journal entry that has his name on it.

It’s everything, and she can never allow it to be everything.

“Tess?”

“Yes?” she says, her throat thick with tears.

He doesn’t answer straight away, and she imagines him pulling his head between his shoulders and looking down at his feet, one hand tucked into the pocket of his jeans.

“We can still watch Jeopardy every night when we’re like 80, right?”

She laughs through a haze of tears, briefly allowing herself to feel the picture he's put in her head. “Only if I get to pick the treats.”

“I veto ice cream.”

"What about Milk Duds?"

“Fair enough. And we could take ballroom dance classes.”

"Yeah, we could do that."

“Excellent. Gotta keep up my game when I’m old and senile.”

“Sounds like a deal,” she says. He’s turning this into a joke because he knows that’s what she needs right now. She's playing along, because she knows that’s what _he_ needs.

“I’ll hold you to that,” he says.

“I know you will.” She closes her eyes for a brief moment, letting a feeling of contentment settle in her stomach.

_We’re okay,_ she tells herself. _We’re going to be okay._

She's not sure to what extent she believes her own words, but for now, it's enough.


	8. Small crime

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How hard can packing for the Olympics really be?

_Tessa’s apartment, Montreal_

_February 2018_

He calls her the night before, precisely seven hours and forty-four minutes before they have to board the plane to Korea and two hours and fourteen minutes into the time slot she’d so carefully booked into her day to get a full night’s sleep.

“T, I’m gonna need you to tell me _exactly_ how many shirts I have to pack for three weeks and how many pants that equals, sweats and regular pants included.”

Tessa presses the mute button of the TV to silence a Friends episode she wasn’t paying any attention to anyway and sits upright against the headboard, a frown creasing her forehead. Their previous pre-Olympic experiences are telling her he sounds unusually uptight, and the fact that he’s actually picked up his phone and called her is raising another red flag.

“Scott, what are you doing?”

“Panic packing, obviously. Does the number of shirts need an equal number of underwear? But how does that work with the boxers _and_ briefs situation? Because I don’t see myself changing into a different kind of underwear after every practice run.”

“You are only _just_ starting to pack?” she splutters, the logistical implications of that scenario cranking up her current level of anxiety to critical heights. “Scott, I thought we had an agreement about this.”

“Well, turns out I still suck at packing after twenty years. Care to help me out here before I start flipping tables?”

She sighs, flinging the throw blanket that’s covering her legs onto the floor but forgetting about the bag of carrots that’s sitting on top of it. Twenty-something baby carrots go flying across the room and smack into the wall next to her neatly packed suitcases, where they scatter across the floor and skitter underneath her bedside table.

“Tess? What was that?”

_The sound of my last nerves popping out of my body, why’d you ask?_

She takes one look at the carrots, groans loudly and flops back onto her mattress. “Okay, whatever, I’m stress eating carrots.”

He barks a laugh in her ear. “I fucking  _knew_ it.”

“What, you knew I would be stress eating an entire bag of baby carrots the night before we leave for the Olympics?”

“No, I knew I wouldn’t be the only one who’s absolutely shitting himself at what we’re about to do. This really doesn’t get any less nerve-wrecking, does it?”

The smile on her face fades and she focuses her attention on the mosquito that’s been buzzing on the ceiling since she got into bed three hours earlier. Since then, the sun has set and the time until her alarm goes off has decreased by eight episodes, none of which she’s paid any attention to.

To say she’s shitting herself might be the understatement of the century.

“I deep-cleaned my entire apartment, filled the fridge and memorized Marie and Patch’s last notes to the soundtrack of _Fight Club_ in a two-hour phone call with Jordan,” she admits, tucking her chin to her chest to glance at the clock on her nightstand and swallowing hard when the current time makes her intestines squirm. “What on earth have we gotten ourselves into, Scott?”

“We’re attempting to beat twenty-four ice dance teams in the biggest Games of our lives. Other than that, we’re totally fine.”

She snorts, momentarily disregarding the fact that their mental prep sessions were supposed to prevent this kind of attitude. For now, however, joking about the situation seems to be the perfect distraction from reality – though just _how_ effective of a distraction, she isn’t sure. 

“We’ll be fine, kiddo,” he tells her as she slides off the side of the bed and starts collecting the casualties of the carrot massacre. “We’ve got this. We’ve put everything into this and we’re ready. We’re going to make our Tessa and Scott mark, no matter the end result.”

She nods mindlessly as she tracks the mosquito on the wall, which has started to descend in the direction of the lamp on her nightstand. “I know we will,” she says, putting away the newly filled bag of carrots and dragging herself upright. “Right, let’s get cracking on this suitcase situation. You better not keep me up all night with this or I might reconsider this whole comeback thing.”

 

* * *

 

They don’t spend all night assembling Scott’s suitcases over the phone, but they come close.

Midnight has come and gone by the time he announces he’s officially packed and ready for Korea, following up with a celebratory howl that makes her crack a grin as she reaches her arms behind her head and lets them float in the air. She’s spent the majority of the last twenty minutes hanging over the edge of her bed, her phone discarded on the floor with Scott on speaker and her head upside-down between the bed and the carpet.

At this point, she suspects her giggly mood is primarily to blame on the amount of blood that has rushed to her head in her current position.

“Great, now we can all get some sleep,” she says, checking the time once more and feeling surprisingly more at ease at the prospect of the five hours of sleep she’s going to get (four hours less than what she was counting on).

“You’re the best partner in the world, T,” he says, sighing heavily.

Her heart swells a little until she hears something in the background that sounds suspiciously similar to the beeping of a microwave, a sound that immediately takes away any heartfelt sincerity from the comment he just made.

Flopping wildly on the covers, she scrambles off the bed and grabs her phone from the floor. “Is that the sound of freshly popped _popcorn_ I’m hearing, Scott Moir?”

“Don’t be jealous, T,” he says, grinning. The beeping stops and he inhales deeply, knowing exactly what he's doing. “I believe we have another popcorn date on February 19, don’t we?”

The popcorn tradition started in Vancouver, when they were both too restless to sleep the night before their compulsory dance and they needed something to take their mind off of the pressure of the Games. She and Joannie had trailed to Patrick, Scott, Bryce and Vaughn’s room since it was one of the nicest rooms in the Olympic village, carrying popcorn and blankets and installing themselves underneath the neat line of fan mail hanging over Scott’s bed to watch a godawful romcom.

They repeated the tradition four years later on the night before the team event in Sochi, days before their Olympic dream came to an end in the form of a silver medal and Scott’s full attention turned to the team Canada hockey games and his pursuit of Kaitlyn Lawes.

Which, in hindsight, makes the power of the popcorn as a good luck charm questionable, but that doesn’t lessen her sudden craving for a sweet treat.

“We better,” she grunts, picturing the steaming bag of popcorn. She’s momentarily distracted when the mosquito suddenly flies directly into her ear, buzzing madly as she catapults herself onto her bed. Scott senses her distraction, though he’s clueless about the mosquito.

“Everything okay over there?”

“Things would be better if I wasn’t listening to you ripping open a bag of fresh popcorn, but yes. Just a damn mosquito.”

“Aha.”

“I’m going to try and get some sleep now, before I start drooling over my phone.” She rolls over, having lost track of the mosquito again and turning to the glass jar on her nightstand instead.

The realization that they’re leaving for the biggest adventure of their lives in a few hours hasn’t really sunk in yet. She’s not sure if it ever will. All she can think of now is how their families and the rest of their team are going to be in the stands cheering them on, the bucket of rice Scott gave her years ago, Patch and Marie, and her grandma, for some reason.

It’s mostly the rice that has kept her from losing her mind over the last couple of days. She’s kept some of it in a little glass jar that usually sits on a shelve by the fireplace but is now staring at her from the nightstand, a tactile reminder of all the hours they’ve put into this.

They’re more prepared than they’ve ever been. That’s not just something she keeps telling herself to soothe her nerves: it’s a feeling in the back of her throat, her stomach, her gut, and she knows that whatever the outcome will be, these Games will be their most memorable ones.

After that, though?

Black hole. Chaos, probably, and more press than they’ll be able to handle.

Usually, that’s the point where she stops herself from thinking altogether.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Scott says, pulling her back from her thoughts. “Thanks for helping me avoid the nuclear disaster that inevitably would’ve ensued if I were forced to do this by myself. Coffee’s on me tomorrow.”

“Always,” she replies, blinking up at the ceiling. “Don’t be late.”

“Promise I won’t. Don’t snooze your alarm ten times.”

She grins unashamedly. “Promise I won’t.”

They end the phone call after exchanging a few more typical travel reminders (Passport? Wallet? Hand sanitizer? Chargers?) and she’s about to flick off the light when the buzzing is back, stronger and more annoying than before.

She’s up and on her knees with a tissue paper at the ready, calculatedly lowering it onto the mosquito on the headboard so she doesn’t scare it off.

Then, in one fell swoop – _bam!_

The headboard knocks against the wall from the sheer force of her stab, and she’s left grinning at the squished mosquito like a lunatic.

Mosquito: 0 – Tessa: 1.

 

____________________________

 

 

_Olympic Village, Pyeongchang_

_February 20, 2018_

 

The Olympic high settles over her in Korea sooner than she expected it would.

Initially, she tries to fight it. Which is a losing battle from the start; the feeling of weightlessness that is there from the moment they receive their free dance scores in the team event takes hold of her and clings on for days afterward, in the practice rink, in Canada Olympic House, in the bathrooms on the third floor; it's there, everywhere she goes.

The one thing calming her nerves is the fact that she knows she’s not the only one. He’s feeling it too, the urge to grab onto something, anything that will keep him anchored to the ground.

It’s there when they skate around the ice with the entirety of team Canada during the victory ceremony and she blindly reaches for his hand behind her back, the touch of it enough to remind her that they still have unfinished business with Olympic ice.

It’s there when he wraps his arms around her seat on the bus ride to Seoul and doesn’t let go after squeezing her shoulders, keeping his fingers on her pulse point even as he jokes around with the other skaters.

It’s there when they eat popcorn on the floor of Tessa’s room on February 19 and drink one paper cup of cheap wine each, knees and shoulders pressed together, trying to crush the terrifying high between them and stay focused on the goal ahead of them.

It’s there when they look at each other across Olympic ice in the last few seconds before their final competitive performance. But by then, they’re inviting it in, letting it stretch out between them, allowing it to fill every inch of the Gangneung Ice Arena and trusting it to carry them over the ice in a way they’ve always wanted it to.

It’s the Olympic high, just as much as every second of the last twenty years they’ve invested in this moment, that leads them to do exactly that.

She doesn't believe it when they hear the words _“and are currently in… first place”_ echoing through the arena. Everything afterward is a blur of purple and red, passion and exhaustion, exhilaration and heartbreak. Exhilaration because they did it. Heartbreak for the exact same reason, only with the realization that it’s over.

The exact memory of how things happen or what they say to each other is already slipping as they go from flower ceremony to medal ceremony, from reporter to journalist. It’s too much to hold onto, too much to fit in the only forty minutes of privacy they get on the night of their gold-medal performance.

They spend the first ten minutes in the recovery room just off the training facility in the Olympic Village in total, blissful silence, Scott sitting on the floor while their physical therapist works on Tessa’s legs. He insisted on getting a Happy Meal and an extra Big Mac before their session, but the little Peter Rabbit toy he’s currently ripping out of the plastic with the enthusiasm of a toddler is not the reason why she can’t help but smile at him over her crossed arms.

“Wicked, it comes with little hoops,” she hears him mutter, more to himself than to her or John, their physiotherapist, who looks up from her right calve to check out the tiny orange, green and blue hoops Scott is now attempting to toss around the arms of Peter Rabbit.

She buries her face in her arms, smothering the laugh she can’t seem to get rid of.

“After three Olympics, you wouldn’t expect the rings he’s most excited about to be the ones that come in a Happy Meal,” John says humorously from some point behind her right shoulder. “Not judging, though. I mean, what you guys did out there…”

Tessa lifts her head from her arms and finds Scott is already staring at her when she locks eyes with him. They exchange no more than a little knowing grin, the only way they’ve acknowledged everything that happened since they got the last scores of their career. It in no way encapsulates the weight of their accomplishments, but she likes how even now, they’re still trying to ground each other.

“All thanks to the best popcorn date ever,” Scott says as he leans over and rapid-fires three rings in a row, missing all of them. “We really did it, kiddo.”

“You can keep saying that, but it won’t make it any more real.” She laughs and lays down her head, her cheeks hurting from smiling all night but exhaustion finally catching up with her.

She watches on for a little while longer as John works on her legs, answering elated family members (both her and Scott's) in the joint group chat and happily reaching out a hand when Scott offers her his last two nuggets. She’s already had a beer and a chocolate bar, but for some reason, the nuggets are the ones that taste the sweetest after two years.

Two whole years with barely any fast food. What the _hell_ were they thinking.

Scott seems to be on the same page, savoring the last bites of his Big Mac like he hasn’t had food in weeks. By the time he’s done, John is finishing up as well, and the physiotherapist only has to take one look between the two of them to know some alone-time is the only thing they need more than physical therapy right now.

“I’ll be back in fifteen,” he says as he pats Tessa’s leg, giving Scott a fist-bump to his shoulder and disappearing right after.

While his presence has never been a nuisance before, the sudden privacy is like the first breath of air Tessa has taken all night.

She pushes herself upright and swings her legs over the table, and he’s already there, wrapping his arms around her before she’s even figured out that that’s all she needs from him in this moment.

She molds herself into his embrace like it’s a pre-skate hug, only this time there’s nothing they have to prepare for. It’s a moment where she allows herself to be whatever she’s feeling without preparing to put it into words in front of a camera: happy, exhausted, overwhelmed, all in that exact order.

It all doesn’t feel nearly as overwhelming in his arms. They’re the arms of the boy who has caught her ever since she was seven, the boy who feels like a safe haven and smells like home. (And the glorious aroma of overly fatty food.) 

“Fuck, T, I’m tired,” he mutters in her hair, eliciting a low chuckle from her.

“I feel like I could sleep for twelve days straight. Any chance we can change our flights and bribe our families into staying for another two weeks, you think?”

Something in his chest rumbles and he buries his face in the crook of her neck, finally giving in to fatigue as well. “I suggest we just make a run for it. I don’t think anyone would notice.”

“I’m sure they wouldn’t. I mean, we’re just two kids from London and Ilderton who won the Olympics on a Monday night. No biggie.”

“Medals only collect dust, after all.”

“Yeah, tell that to the idiots who got second in Sochi. They’d use those medals to slap you in the face.”

He snorts loudly from the spot in her neck and raises his head to look at her with a drunken look on his face. His laughter sets her off as well, and for a moment they’re snickering with laughter the way you would four hours into an all-nighter at a slumber party.

“Who’s the funny one now, huh,” she slurs, every bit of drunkenness caused by the insurmountable happiness that’s still coursing through her veins. She waves her hand through the air in the direction of his shoulder but he catches it before she can hit him, pulling her from the table and into his arms.

“What’s this?” she asks him in a whisper as they start shuffling around in a circle, only accompanied by the sound of their sneakers on the tiled floor.

He lays his head on her shoulder again, fitting himself into her until any semblance of a dance hold is gone. “Our Olympic swan song. Which is ironic given that there’s no music and we still have the gala, eh?”

Smiling against the fabric of his team Canada shirt, she softly shakes her head. “Twenty years of this bullshit and I’m still not sick of you. It’s a miracle, really.”

“Oh, admit it, I’m your best friend.”

“If I recall correctly, _I’m_ not the one who had a problem admitting that,” she says, pulling back a little and shoving his shoulder when he refuses to look at her.

He looks up, mischief brewing in his eyes. “‘Best friend’ sounds so belittling, though. Like I’ve got a bunch of friends just like you and you just happen to be the best one.”

Something in her gut jumps, something that’s reading the underlying meaning behind his words. A meaning she doesn’t want to get into tonight. Or maybe ever.

“What, are you saying you can come up with something better than ‘business partners’?” she asks teasingly.

“No, I’m saying we don’t have to define anything.”

She prods his chest with one finger. “See, that’s the problem with the media, though. They like labels just as much as the next person.”

“Fuck the media.”

She chuckles. “Sadly, I’m planning a relationship with them that’ll last longer than it’ll take us to get on a plane back to Canada, so I’m going to have to ask you not to tell them that in person.”

He blinks at her, no longer any traces of mischief in his eyes. “Can I ask you something as well?”

“Sure you can.”

His eyes are dark, his pupils wide, and his arms wrap around her a little tighter. “Can we have this moment?”

“To do what?”

“Not to define anything?”

She forgets about her lips right after they part, her eyes flitting between the two hazel ones in front of her. She feels the same stutter in her heartbeat as the morning they talked on the intercom after their road trip through Canada, only it’s harder to hide it from him now.

“We don’t have to,” she says slowly, part of the defense she’s put up for so long crumbling irrevocably. She doesn’t know if this is the black hole after the Olympics speaking, if she’s more scared of losing whatever they have after the Games than she is to fight the power of their Olympic high, but she knows she wants to hold onto him right now, in every way he’ll allow her to. “Not yet anyways, okay?”

His lips curl up in a smile that's too big for his face. “We’ve got ourselves a deal, eh, business partner.”

She smiles as well, unable to stop herself from making the stupid move of looking down at his lips.

It’s a small crime in the grand scheme of things. A ripple in an otherwise calm sea, a stutter on a clean rap sheet.

Except they’ve just won the Olympics, so really, who’s even keeping track anymore.

“Remember when we tossed that coin in China?” he says, his voice sliding into her consciousness like a marble slipping through silk. He briefly leans in to touch his nose to hers, and it’s cold as ice.

“What, the little motherfucker that started all of this?” She laughs in the space between their mouths, the mental rewind to the sound of the air-conditioning in a Chinese McDonald’s momentarily tricking her into thinking the past two years haven’t happened yet. _A bubble in a bubble._      

“Yeah. Well, I figured I should wait until after the Olympics to tell you this, but that little motherfucker might’ve had nothing to do with it.”

“English, please.”

“What I’m saying, Tess, is that a penny didn’t start this. We did.”

_Still making no sense whatsoever, buddy._

She doesn’t even try to look away from his lips this time. “If this is you trying to give an inspirational speech on the night of our gold-medal performance, I’m going to have to disappoint you, because I’m too tired to figure out the hidden meaning behind it. If there even is one.”

He lulls his head back on his shoulders and laughs, gripping her hips. “We said heads, but it landed on tails. I only told you it landed on heads because I didn’t want you to think that stupid penny toss was a sign of bad luck, which _clearly_ it wasn’t.”

“You absolute _fool_ ,” she spits, feeling equal parts betrayed and amused by this revelation. “What else are you not telling me? Did we actually get silver and no one's told me?”

“Well, I can’t tell you, but I can show you.”

“Show me what?” Her heart jolts wildly when she realizes how his face isn’t goofy anymore, probably hasn’t been for the last fifteen seconds or so. For a moment, she’s wildly distracted by the freckle under his left eye and the shape of his eyebrows (he’s got good eyebrows, always has), but not distracted enough not to notice how his breath skims her face as the tip of his nose brushes hers once more.

“I’m sorry to tell you, but you’ll just have to trust me on this one.”         

Her brain goes to zero at the same speed he closes the distance between their mouths, and she latches onto him like she’s starved for him. Because in a room with a thousand reasons why they shouldn’t do this, she’ll always need just one to shut up the rest.

Him.

His kiss isn’t a promise. It never is. It’s a recharge, a reminder that this is going to keep happening, whether they’ll allow it or not.

_That’s the beauty about real life, eh? You don’t get to choose._

The words he said to her in Scotland almost three years ago are swept away again with the wind that was there on the beach that day, but the echo lingers in her head. They _chose_ to do this comeback. Even if he had told her the penny didn’t land on heads, she knows they wouldn’t gone through with it.

She _chose_ to have the surgery that could mean the end of her career, because she couldn’t live with any of the alternatives.

She _chose_ to move away from home at thirteen, even when she knew she wasn’t ready to be away from her family yet.

She _chose_ to give up ballet for a boy who wanted to be a hockey player, despite it being her biggest dream since she was three.

Because he chose her too.

And for some, fucked up reason no therapist or marriage counselor has ever been able to figure out, they’ve kept making that same choice, over and over and over again, for the last twenty years.

She slides her cold hands underneath his jacket while their mouths move in a dance of their own, finding every inch of his body solid and warm and familiar. She wants to sink into this feeling, this moment, and never let it go. It’s like homesickness but reversed: every inch of her, while completely drained and simultaneously in the best shape of her life, is right where it’s supposed to be, in a better place than any podium could ever be.

She’s smiling when he breaks the kiss to take a breather, inhaling the scent of his shirt – laundry detergent and the cologne he’s worn since he was sixteen. She tucks her head under his chin and he wraps her in his embrace, and she wonders if this time, things will be different after the Olympics. If this time, she’ll tell little T and her journal to fuck right off because you can’t just put the pros and cons of life in a list and make choices accordingly.

When he looks down at her with a look on his face she can’t quite figure out, her face cracks into a smile before he’s even said anything. “What is that look?”

“That would be my we-fucking-won-the-Olympics-look,” he says, his eyebrows going all soft on her. “And God knows I wouldn’t have wanted this with anyone other than you.”

She presses her smile in his shirt, smothering the strangled noise escaping her throat.

If she could call this moment anything, she’d call it victory.

Olympics: 2 – Tessa and Scott: 5.

Payback, bitches.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this is when I come to the realization that probably 99% of this fic is going to be scenes between just the two of them. Oops?
> 
> One thing I can promise, though, is that a few family members might make an appearance in the near future. And some other skaters. And an original character. (Did that give away too much?)
> 
> I hope you're enjoying this just as much as I am :)


	9. Post-it

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life after the Olympics, in true Tessa Virtue fashion, captured on two hundred post-it notes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was originally planning on adding a second part to this chapter that features the Vogue photoshoot in Japan, but 1) I'm still not 100% happy with what I've written so far and 2) I kinda liked this as a stand-alone piece. So, here it is.
> 
> (Oh, and 3), the first show of the last tour starts in roughly five hours, so sentimental reasons also. ;))

_Tessa’s house, London, Ontario_

_March 2018_

Life after the Olympics, you ask?

Well.

It’s the part she knew was coming. The part she was warned about. Had read about. Was prepared for.

Turns out not to be prepared for at all.

It starts on a rare night at home a few weeks after the Games, when she’s sipping on a glass of wine at her kitchen island. The stereo installation in the living room is atypically silent, the TV in the other room switched on to some news station but the images flashing soundlessly on the screen, and in a silly moment of frustration when she spills some of the wine onto her perfectly white robe, she jumps up and growls out loud to an otherwise quiet house.

On the kitchen island, roughly two hundred neon-colored post-it notes start fluttering like butterflies in the wake of her movements.

Absurdly as it may seem, it’s the first time she starts to think that maybe she’s overdoing it.

_Line of greeting cards._

_Charity work._

_Fashion collaborations._

_Finish psychology degree._

_Produce tour across Canada._

_Get an MBA._

_Get a master’s in psychology._

_Something with real estate???_

It’s all there, all her hopes and dreams for a post-Olympic life, but it’s the note with the three question marks that gets plucked from the battered banana in the middle of the island as she shuffles to the sink, using a wet cloth to dab at the wine stain and sighing heavily when all that does is make it even bigger.

Draping the cloth back over the stainless-steel tap, her eyes turn to the post-it note, her back going inexplicably cold.

The three question marks are just as much a product of her uncertainty as they are of the oppressive feeling in her chest that hasn’t left since she got that horrible cold after they got back from Korea. Much like Scott, she spent almost two days in bed before they jetted off to yet another corner of the world, but she figured the cold would leave once they got settled into normal life again.

Well, the cold did. The nervous butterflies in her stomach didn’t. And, glancing over her shoulder at her neon-covered kitchen island, she guesses there was never such a thing as a “normal” post-Olympic life anyway.

No sane person spends four hours meticulously writing down goals on post-it notes instead of getting the sleep she desperately needs.

And no sane person drops a glass of wine moments after spilling half of its content _just_ because the doorbell suddenly rings.

The shudder that runs through her when the glass shatters on the floor leaves her immobile for a second, staring at the million different pieces like she’s half expecting them to jump back into her hand and morph into a perfectly new wine glass.

With a slight shake of her head, she carefully steps over them and hurries to the front door, surprise conjuring a smile on her face before she even has a chance to let disappointment sink in.

“ _Sis_! What are you doing here, I wasn’t expecting you at all!”

Jordan steps into her open arms with a broad smile on her face, the plastic wrapping of the flowers she’s holding crinkling in her ear and smothering her laugh. “I’m taking advantage of the one night my baby sis is home before she’s off on another adventure, duh. I brought wine, in case you were out.”

The smile on Tessa’s face falters a little as she steps back to let Jordan inside, because even though her comment probably wasn’t a dig at the obvious – _you’re never home_ – it does, in some way, feel like it.

Or maybe this is just a sign that she really does need some sleep.

“Why the flowers, though?” she asks airily as she follows Jordan through the hallway, momentarily forgetting about the current state of her kitchen until she nearly runs into her sister when she stops abruptly in the doorway.

“I think the better question would be, ‘Why all the post-it notes?’ And did you just drop a glass or something?”

“Uhm – I might have.” She pushes her way past Jordan, tiptoeing to the storage room on her fuzzy socks to pull out the vacuum. She insists in cleaning up the mess on the floor by herself while Jordan puts the flowers in water and gets settled at the island, which is an incredibly dumb move.

By the time she’s stored away the vacuum, the crease on Jordan’s forehead has grown into a frown, and she turns to stare at Tessa like she’s gone insane.

“This army of post-it notes I’m looking at is at the very _least_ a four-year plan, right? Please tell me these aren’t things you want to accomplish before the year is over, because I might have to smother you if they are.”

“Well, _obviously_ I’m not going to be able to achieve all of this in under a year,” Tessa sputters, reaching for some new wine glasses and placing them right on top of the notes for lack of free space. “They’re just some goals I want to achieve, eventually.”

“But they don’t have an expiration date?” Jordan carefully lifts one eyebrow, staring at her quizzically. “Right?”

“Most of them don’t.” She sits down on the chair next to her, fighting a sudden inexplicable urge to throw her arms over the table and hide the notes. “But enough about me and my silly post-it notes, I want to know what’s going on with you. Any cute guys that have come in for your classes? Any profile pics you want me to rate from one to dateable-as-heck?”

Jordan’s mildly concerned frown finally smooths out and she laughs, taking a sip of wine. “Sadly, no. Turns out there’s still this whole stigma surrounding barre and guys, which is weird, isn’t it?”

“Hm, very.” Tessa grins at her over the edge of her glass, tucking herself a little deeper into her robe. “Real bummer, though, since mom’s levels of interference reached an all-time high after Korea. Remember that really nice staff member she tried to set you up with, the one who got you a free beer because he spilled the first one all over you in the Olympic House?”

“So you noticed that, huh?” Jordan blurts out a laugh, making the loose bun on the back of her head bounce up and down. “The best part about all of it is I don’t even think she realizes she’s doing it.”

“She only means well, you know. And I think she’d be the last person to tell anyone they need a partner in order to be happy.”

“Yeah, well, that’s true.” She ticks her glass against Tessa’s, shooting her a wink. “Speaking about partners, though…”

Oh, lord. There it is.

Tessa’s grip on the stem of the wine glass gets a little tighter, the nervous butterflies in her stomach going a little wilder. She grits her teeth, preparing for an alternate version of the question she must've answered at least a hundred times over the past few weeks.

“How is Scotty? How is _he_ dealing with all this mayhem surrounding you two?”

She snorts at the word _mayhem_ , because that’s exactly what life since the Games has been. Mayhem.

She was prepared for it, but not for the extent to which Canada (and, let’s face it, the rest of the entire freaking world) would still care about them almost one month after their gold-medal performance. Emails with interview requests are still clogging up her inbox, more than she’ll ever be able to get through – and yet, because it’s who she is, she doesn’t want to leave any of them unanswered, even if it’s to reject the offer.

“Fine, I guess,” she says, taking a long sip of her wine and gazing at the sea of post-it notes in front of her. “Fine”, in this instance, means absolutely anything but fine. “I think he’s ready for it to be over, though, which is more than understandable.”

“And how about you?”

“How about me?”

“Yeah, how are you dealing with it?”

She slightly narrows her eyes at Jordan before looking away, because for some reason, she gets the feeling that she’s not talking about the craziness on social media since Korea. She stares a little harder at the post-it notes, eventually finding the blue one that sticks out between a couple of red ones.

“To be perfectly honest with you, I haven’t really had the opportunity to deal with any of it,” she says, reaching for the blue post-it note and crumbling it in her fist before Jordan can read what’s written on it. “I believe we will be able to evaluate things once the craziness dies down, though. Or at least I would hope so.” 

It’s as good of an answer as she can give for now. Because even for herself, it’s the only answer she can come up with.

They haven’t really had any sort of talk, especially not the sort with a capital T. But things are good. Things are so good, even, that any hint of disappointment she might’ve felt at the sight of her sister earlier is purely to blame on him.

She doesn’t realize she’s smiling until Jordan’s elbow stabs her right in her kidney.

“Hey, sis. You can see that light in your eyes from a mile away.”

“Oh, whatever,” she says, laughing as she moves out of her sister’s reach. “Besides, while you’re criticizing my post-it notes, you should also know that I included our girls’ retreat. Here.” She leans forward and picks a yellow post-it note from the far end of the kitchen island, sticking it down right in front of Jordan.

“ _Vacation in France,_ huh?” Jordan asks, nodding slowly and turning to her with a growing smile.

“Or Italy. Or literally any other place in Europe,” Tessa rushes to say, her eyes jumping guiltily to all the other work-related post-it notes. “Wherever you guys want to go. We’ll have to discuss it with mom, once we get back fr—”

“Yes, we’ll get it all figured out once you’re done touring. Please don’t stress about it yet, I’m just delighted that I’ll finally get to share a room with my baby sis again.”

An unexpected smile tugs at the corners of her mouth. “Okay, I didn’t say anything about sharing rooms.”

“Excuse me, _rude_.”

“Full offense intended. You snore like dad, and I wouldn’t share a room with him for all the _pains au chocolat_ in the world.”

“You little turd. Winning the Olympics did nothing to make you more humble, did it?”

Tessa lets out a loud laugh, kicking Jordan under the table with her foot. She reacts instantly by grabbing Tessa’s ankle, but in a moment of unexpected emotion, she’s suddenly pulling her in and hugging her tightly, the glass of wine and the snoring comment discarded on the table.

“Just know that I miss you terribly, eh? And I don’t want you to feel sad or guilty about that, Tess. I just… I need my baby sister. And I think she needs me too, more than she might realize.”

Tessa swallows around the lump that has lodged in her throat, hiding her face in her sister’s shoulder like she used to do when she was little. “Of course I need you. Don’t ever think I don’t need you, or mom, or even Kevin or Casey or dad.”

Jordan squeezes her tightly, pausing for a moment. “We’ll give Kevin a pass,” she says after a beat of silence, making both of them snigger with laughter through the tears stinging in their eyes.

“Just be happy, ‘kay?” she whispers in her ear, running her hands up and down Tessa’s back. “Wherever that is, or whomever it’s with, I want you to be happy.”

Tessa nods, unable to express the sense of gratitude she feels for her sister. In a lot of ways, what she just gave her was her blessing, a blessing to do every single crazy thing she’s written down on these post-it notes, but also to be with whoever she wants to be with.

Including the person whose name is written down on the blue post-it note she’s currently squeezing in her fist.


End file.
